Higher Education Becomes More Costly

Geoff Maslen
University students are having to meet more of the cost of their higher education in countries with existing mass higher education systems and "ageing demographics" - and the trend towards reduced public spending on universities looks set to continue. A new report, released last week, says governments facing budget-balancing exercises, such as Britain and some US states including California, are already imposing cuts.
Meanwhile, in emerging countries with burgeoning higher education systems, such as China, India and Brazil, the report says efforts are being made to expand access quickly to new student populations.
Tuition Fees and Student Financial Assistance: 2010 Global Year in Review was prepared by Higher Education Strategy Associates, a Toronto-based company set up last year as an extension of the Canadian Education Project.
The 60-page report reviews the situation facing higher education institutions in 39 countries, including a dozen in Europe and 13 in Asia. It says that although the global situation for tuition and student financial aid policies did not change drastically last year, "major changes to the affordability and accessibility of higher education around the world are on their way".
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0159, 20 February 2011

Ethics not a Priority for MBA Students

Cayley Dobie
A tiny proportion of MBA students feel ethics courses are a necessary part of MBA programmes and qualifications, according to a recent survey by London based business education specialists CarringtonCrisp.
The survey Tomorrow's MBA polled over 700 prospective MBA students from 91 countries worldwide last November and December, in the aftermath of the world's toughest recession in decades. Despite the fact business malpractice had deepened that slump, only 5% of the students who responded thought it would be important to learn specifics about ethics as part of their MBA education.
But, as ever, the message of statistics depends on how they are interpreted. "It's not that people don't want ethics, but that they expect it to be embedded in everything they learn rather than as a stand-alone course," says Andrew Crisp, author of Tomorrow's MBA.
Instead of offering courses that focus directly on ethics, Crisp says schools should ensure that their programme as a whole incorporates ethics into all types of business courses.
"For business schools the message is that selling a programme on the back of specific ethics courses may not work well; rather, prospective students are interested in courses that can be practically applied," Crisp says.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0132, 11 July 2010

Private Education and Development

In the past decade, private education has had an increasingly significant impact in the developing world, with many countries promoting private sector growth to expand educational capacity and access at all levels, an international education conference was told last week.
The conference heard that more entrepreneurs were investing in the private sector in developing countries and "bringing fresh approaches and perspectives".
It was the fifth global conference to be held in Washington by the International Finance Corporation and attracted representatives of private education organisations and institutions from around the world.
The IFC provides investments and advisory services to expand the private sector in developing countries.
The corporation - an arm of the World Bank - has committed US$469 million in financing 62 education projects in 30 countries at a total value of $1.54 billion. Of these, 21 or 35% were in the world's poorest countries. IFC-supported projects help educate about 1.2 million students annually.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0118, 04 April 2010

Higher Education Budgets and The Recession

John Aubrey Douglass
In the midst of the global recession, how have national governments around the world viewed the role of higher education in their evolving strategies for economic recovery? Demand for higher education generally goes up during economic downturns. Which nations have proactively protected funding for universities and colleges to help maintain access, to help retrain workers and to mitigate unemployment rates? And which nations have simply made large funding cuts for higher education in light of the severe downturn in tax revenues?
This essay, part of Research and Occasional Papers series published by the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California - Berkeley, provides a moment-in-time review of the fate of higher education among a number of OECD nations and other countries, with a particular focus on the United States and on California - the largest state in terms of population and in the size of its economy.
Preliminary indicators show that most nations are not resorting to uncoordinated and reactionary cutting of funding and reductions in access, such as we see in the US. Their political leaders see higher education as a key to both short-term economic recovery and long-term competitiveness.
Further, although this is speculative, it appears that many nations are using the economic downturn to actually accelerate reform policies, some intended to promote efficiencies, but most focused on improving the quality of their university sector and promoting innovation in their economies.
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Paper from the Center for Studies in Higher Education, Berkeley
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0114, 07 March 2010

The Rise of Asia’s Universities

Richard C Levin
At the beginning of the 21st century, the East is rising. The rapid economic development of Asia since the Second World War has altered the balance of power in the global economy and hence in geopolitics. The rising nations of the East all recognise the importance of an educated workforce as a means to economic growth and understand the impact of research in driving innovation and competitiveness. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s the higher education agenda in Asia’s early developers – Japan, South Korea and Taiwan – was first and foremost to increase the fraction of their populations provided with postsecondary education. Their initial focus was on expanding the number of institutions and their enrolments, and impressive results were achieved. Today, the later and much larger developing nations of Asia – China and India – have an even more ambitious agenda.
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Yale President’s lecture to The Royal Society, UK
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0111, 14 Februari 2010

Survey Finds More Students Worried about Finances

Family unemployment and a growing student loan burden are making American college students increasingly anxious about finances, according to a national survey by University of California - Los Angeles researchers, writes Larry Gordon for the Los Angeles Times. Nearly 67% of freshmen at four-year colleges and universities said they had at least some concerns about paying their tuition bills, the highest percentage expressing such anxieties in a dozen years, the annual study found. And with unemployment affecting many families, about 53% of freshmen who took part in the survey last autumn said they carried student loans, up about 4% from the previous year and the highest in nine years.
The report, considered the nation's most comprehensive assessment of college student attitudes, found that 4.5% of the students' fathers were unemployed, the largest jobless proportion among fathers since the survey began 44 years ago. Nearly 8% of the respondents' mothers were jobless, the most in 30 years.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0108 24 Januari 2010

More Women Out-earning, Out-learning Husbands

Bringing home the bacon is less and less a man's job in the US these days, writes Nicole Santa Cruz for The Los Angeles Times. According to a Pew Research Center study released on Tuesday, a larger share of men are married to women whose education and income exceed their own. In 1970, 4% of husbands had wives who made more money than they did. In 2007, that share rose to 22%.
"As women have made these extraordinary gains in working and education, men have been able to share in these gains through marriage," said D'Vera Cohn, a senior writer with Pew and a co-author of the study. "With so many women working and achieving higher income, it's increasingly a way for men to achieve economic security."
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0108 24 Januari 2010

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

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

The Business of Higher Education in US

Timothy McGettigan
Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University
In recent years, colleges and universities have encountered increasing pressure to operate like businesses. As the logic goes, businesses must survive in a cut-throat climate of unfettered competition and thus their organisations need to be leaner, more efficient and more responsive to the needs of their customers than not-for-profit organisations, such as colleges and universities.
In the unforgiving crucible of free market competition, only the fittest businesses (for example, those that deliver the highest quality products at fair market value), will survive. Of course, the seemingly endless government bail-outs following the 2008 financial crash cast a dubious light on the above claims, nevertheless, the notion that higher education should embrace a more business-like organizational philosophy remains deeply entrenched.
Full report on the University World News site
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0078 31 May 2009

Consumers’ Meat Purchasing Habits Changing

Economic woes are affecting where people shop for meat as well as the kind of cut, brand and quantity purchased.

The recession is being felt throughout the grocery store, and especially in the meat department, according to a joint study by the American Meat Institute and the Food Marketing Institute.
Economic woes are affecting where people shop for meat as well as the kind of cut, brand and quantity purchased, found the “Power of Meat” study. While shoppers are eating out less and cooking more, they are also trading down, substituting and eliminating, resulting in the overall spending amount remaining roughly the same, at $91 per week. While grocery expenses may be relatively unchanged, the way shoppers are spending is not. The study found that at least half are using coupons whenever possible, buying only what they need and switching from national brands to store brands. Other popular measures include resisting luxury foods and buying items on sale.
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Source: Watt Poultry Com, 09 March 2009

Recession's Impact on Post-secondary Education

Recession's impact on post-secondary educationGovernments could assist universities to survive the recession – and perhaps be in a position to thrive once the recovery arrives – by helping to pay for salary restructuring, not letting enrolment formulas constrain institutions from meeting shifting demand, allowing tuition to increase while protecting effective student aid programmes, and funding brains not buildings. This is according to a new report from Canada’s Educational Policy Institute, On the Brink: How the recession of 2009 will affect post-secondary education, which looks at “profound effects the recession will have on both revenues and expenditures in the post-school sector”.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0065 01 March 2009

Harvard Delays Expansion Plans but Increases Fees

Harvard University President Drew Faust announced last week that the university will delay its expansion into Allston in response to the harsh economic reality, and may even pause construction on a massive $1 billion science complex that was slated for completion in 2011, reports The Boston Globe. Faust also announced a 3.5% tuition increase for next year, bringing tuition to $33,696 and the total cost of a Harvard education - including room and board - to $48,868.At the same time, the university will increase need-based scholarships by 18%, she said.The Faust announcement comes amid a tough fiscal year during which Harvard's once $36.9 billion endowment, which makes up more than a third of the university's $3.5 billion operating budget, is projected to plummet 30% for 2008-2009.The science complex, touted as the cornerstone of Harvard's presence in Allston, was to have housed the university's new department of stem cell and regenerative biology and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, as well as the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Those highly touted projects will now be housed elsewhere, Faust said.
Full report on The Boston Globe site
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0064 22 February 2009

Pelaksanaan Audit Penataan Kompartemen dan Zona Usaha Perunggasan

Sejauh ini pelaksanaan audit kompartemen dan zona usaha perunggasan sudah dilaksanakan di sebagian kabupaten di Provinsi Jawa Barat, yaitu kabupaten Sukabumi, Purwakarta dan Subang. Pelaksanaan awal di beberapa Kabupaten dilakukan dengan kerjasama dengan pihak Belanda dan USDA (United State Department Of Agriculture). Pelaksanaan audit dilakukan oleh Tim Penilai yang telah dilatih dan berkerja berdasarkan Standar Operasional Prosedur (SOP) yang telah disusun.
Berdasarkan Peraturan Menteri Pertanian Nomor 28/Permentan/OT.140/5/2008 tentang Pedoman Penataan Kompartemen dan Penataan Zona Usaha Perunggasan dinyatakan bahwa tahapan penataan kompartemen dilakukan mulai dari tahap persiapan, pelaksanaan dan sertifikasi. Tahap persiapan meliputi persyaratan yang harus dipenuhi oleh pemohon yaitu harus memenuhi persyaratan telah menerapkan Pedoman Cara Pembibitan Yang Baik (Good Breeding Practice/GBP) dengan melampirkan kelengkapan manual panduan mutu, berupa pedoman buku atau prosedur tetap yang mengatur tatalaksana produksi dan kesehatan ternak, termasuk pemilihan bibit, pemberian pakan, biosekuriti, program vaksinasi dan lain-lain, dan bagi usaha peternakan komersial telah menerapkan Pedoman Budidaya Unggas Yang Baik (Good Farming Practice/GFP) dengan melampirkan kelengkapan manual panduan mutu sedangkan bagi usaha perunggasan harus memiliki manual pengawasan internal berupa prosedur tetap pengawasan pada titik kritis untuk memantau dan mengetahui bahwa proses manajemen usaha peternakan tersebut telah berjalan dengan semestinya.
Lebih lengkap kunjungi situs Ditjennak

Extreme Work-Study

n the United States, the folk culture of higher education is deeply committed to the notion that higher education remains closely associated with higher wages. The truth is more complicated: more and more people have attempted to gain the higher education wage benefit in the past four decades, and real wages for many of those with advanced degrees have declined, rather than risen, writes Marc Bousquet, a member of the council of the American Association of University Professors and associate professor of English at Santa Clara University. In an excerpt in Academic Matters, adapted from his book How The University Works: Higher education and the low-wage nation, Bousquet explores the relationship of mass higher education in the US to a global shift toward precarious employment.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0062 08 February 2009

Obama Raises Hopes in Higher Education

This week’s inauguration of a new American president has created widespread hope on campuses across the nation that Barack Obama will act quickly to tackle the deepening recession. Meantime, colleges and universities have been forced to act to boost their student-aid programmes to help middle-income families caught unexpectedly in the grim economic downturn.
Full report on the University World News site
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0059 18 January 2009

Universities Lose Billions as Recession Deepens

Geoff Maslen
Few higher education institutions around the world appear to have escaped the collapse of financial markets. In Asia, Africa, North America, Europe, Britain and down under in Australia and New Zealand, universities have been hit hard as the value of their investments in property and shares and, in many cases, their income from diverse sources crumples. How to counter, or at the very least cope with, this alarming situation – unique in the experience of university managers – will be the great challenge in the year ahead. As the following stories show, for higher education the boom days are well and truly over.
Full report on the University World News site
Source: University Univertsity News, Issue No: 0057 14 December 2008

Many US Universities Cut Staff and Spending

Shrinking endowments, state funding reductions and families struggling to pay tuition are forcing many colleges and universities to cut staff and spending or to delay construction and development plans, writes Tony Pugh of McClatchy. From well-heeled Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Dartmouth to large public institutions such as the California State University system, many institutions are facing difficult financial decisions stemming from the nation’s economic standstill.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0054 23 November 2008

The Global Crisis and Universities

The effect of the world financial upheaval on higher education institutions around the globe varies markedly from one nation to another, depending on the extent that their banks and currencies have been affected by what is taking place in America and Europe. Universities in countries experiencing an economic downturn, with consumer confidence shattered and unemployment on the rise, are already curtailing their spending and some have begun putting off staff. Even if they face no immediate threat, many institutions that rely for a significant part of their income on student fees – and foreign fees in particular – will be gravely concerned by the problems confronting local students in taking out loans, and the rapid slowing of economies in countries whose students go abroad to study. For universities that have come to rely on the money paid by Chinese students enrolled offshore, the thought of large numbers staying home is alarming. Our correspondents report

Source: Issue No: 0051 University World News - 02 Nov 2008

Daging dan Telur Ayam Sumber Protein Murah

Nugraha Setiawan
Poultry Indonesia, edisi Juli 2006

Dibandingkan dengan bahan makanan sumber karbohidrat, biaya yang harus dikeluarkan untuk bahan makanan sumber protein relatif lebih mahal. Akan tetapi bahan makanan sumber protein harus tersedia dalam menu makanan sehari-hari, agar tubuh kita memperoleh asupan gizi yang seimbang. Kecukupan konsumsi protein akan menjadi masalah, manakala banyak keluarga dengan tingkat perekonomian yang terbatas tidak mampu menyediakan protein yang optimal dalam menu makanan sehari-hari bagi keluarganya.
Kecukupan konsumsi protein, tidak hanya terkait dengan masalah kesehatan. Banyak literatur menyatakan konsumsi protein sangat berkaitan dengan tingkat intelegensia. Artinya, untuk membangun sumber daya manusia yang berkualitas, salah satu hal yang harus menjadi perhatian yaitu memenuhi kebutuhan akan protein.

Protein Berkualitas
Dilihat dari sumbernya, ada dua macam protein yang biasa dikonsumsi manusia. Pertama, protein nabati yang berasal dari tumbuh-tumbuhan. Kedua, protein hewani yang berasal dari hewan ternak dan hasil perikanan. Dari sudut pandang gizi dan ekonomi, kedua macam protein tersebut memiliki kelebihan dan kekurangannya masing-masing.
Protein nabati harganya relatif murah, namun asam amino esensial yang dikandungnya kurang lengkap. Sementara protein hewani walaupun relatif mahal, kandungan asam amino esensialnya lebih lengkap. Dengan demikian, jika dilihat dari kualitasnya, protein hewani bisa disebut lebih bermutu dibandingkan dengan protein nabati, tetapi harganya mahal. Sedangkan protein nabati harganya murah, tetapi kualitasnya tidak sebaik protein hewani.
Asam amino esensial adalah substansi protein yang diperlukan oleh tubuh manusia, tetapi tubuh tidak dapat mensintesa sendiri, sehingga harus dikonsumsi dari luar dalam bentuk makanan. Mengingat hal tersebut, maka penyediaan protein nabati dan hewani perlu dikombinasikan, agar tubuh memperoleh asupan protein berkualitas tetapi biaya yang dikeluarkan untuk membeli makanan tidak terlampau besar.

Berkualitas tapi Murah
Perkiraan kasar kebutuhan manusia akan protein sekitar satu gram per kg berat badan per hari. Seseorang yang memiliki berat badan 60 kg, perlu mengkonsumsi protein 60 gram per hari. Sediaoetama (2000) dalam bukunya “Ilmu Gizi” mengemukakan, dari total kebutuhan protein, sekitar 20-40% atau kalau dirata-ratakan sekitar 30% disarankan untuk disuplay dari sumber protein hewani, antara lain daging, telur, dan susu, agar asam amino esensialnya menjadi lengkap.
Sebuah keluarga yang terdiri atas ayah (70 kg), ibu (50 kg), anak ke-1 (50 kg), dan anak ke-2 (30 kg), berat badan total keluarga tersebut adalah 210 kg. Berarti kebutuhan protein keluarga tersebut adalah 210 gram per hari, yang terdiri atas 140 gram protein nabati + 70 gram protein hewani. Jika kebutuhan protein hewani hanya akan dicukupi oleh daging sapi yang memiliki kandungan protein sekitar 19,8%, artinya agar keluarga tersebut tercukupi kebutuhan protein hewaninya diperlukan daging sapi seberat 3,5 ons. Kalau harga daging sapi Rp 45.000,-/kg, maka uang yang harus dikeluarkan untuk memenuhi asupan sumber protein hewani setara dengan Rp. 15.750,-/hari.
Untuk mengetahui sumber protein hewani yang murah, diperlukan informasi mengenai kandungan protein dari tiap jenis bahan pangan hewani, serta harganya setiap satuan berat atau volume. Daging sapi meskipun memiliki kandungan protein yang lebih tinggi, namun harganya jauh di atas daging ayam dan telur, sehingga harga persatuan berat protein jatuhnya tetap menjadi mahal. Susu murni, yang memiliki harga persatuan volume/berat paling murah jika dibandingkan dengan daging dan telur, karena kandungan proteinnya sedikit, maka harga protein persatuan beratnya juga relatif mahal dibandingkan daging ayam dan telur.
Berdasarkan perhitungan yang dilakukan oleh penulis, ternyata harga per satuan berat protein yang berasal dari daging dan telur ayam, adalah yang paling murah jika dibandingkan dengan protein hewani yang berasal dari bahan makanan asal ternak lainnya. Harga protein daging ayam hanya Rp 71,-/gram, bahkan protein telur ayam jatuhnya hanya Rp 63,-/gram. Sementara harga protein susu sapi murni adalah Rp 156,-/ gram, dan harga protein daging sapi adalah yang termahal Rp 220,-/gram.
Dalam keadaan perekonomian keluarga yang terbatas, sementara agar sehat perlu tetap mengkonsumsi protein hewani, daging dan telur ayam menjadi prioritas pilihan yang paling layak sebagai sumber protein hewani bagi keluarga. Hanya saja perlu dipertimbangkan variasi masakan yang dibuat dari daging dan telur ayam, agar tetap memenuhi selera untuk dikonsumsi dalam menu sehari-hari tanpa rasa bosan.