Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan announced not to force private universities and colleges to change names after opposition lawmakers threatened to freeze a huge portion of the ministry's budget. The ministry had sent a letter to all universities and colleges with the words "China," "Chinese" or "Chunghwa" (Chinese) in their names and asked them to change their names to underscore Taiwan's identity and avoid confusion with mainland China following Taiwan's executive cabinet plan of changing the names of all of the nation's overseas missions and state-owned enterprises before the Dec. 11 legislative elections, which raised sharp criticisms from legislators of the opposition party.
Three Shanghai private colleges will be allowed to admit students without national college entrance exam score requirements this year, marking a major change in the city's decades-old higher education admission system.
Walk into any classroom at one of China's elite business schools and what you're likely to see isn't all that different from what you would find at Harvard, Wharton, or MIT's Sloan School. True, there's a preponderance of Asian faces and the occasional smattering of Mandarin. But the classes, course materials, subject matter, and even the teachers are virtually identical to their U.S. counterparts.
Shengda College in central China has a diverse curriculum, foreign faculty members to teach English and a manicured campus, where weeping willows shade a recreational lake.
Many Japanese private institutions, including half the junior colleges (which cater heavily to women), have lost money in the last two years. Causes include decreasing overall enrollments stemming from a falling birth rate, economic recession, and an increase in the number of new institutions. Some of the troubled private institutions have had to shut down. Others pursue policy to avoid this fate. Cost cutting falls heavily on staff. Measures to make institutions more attractive often center on attracting nontraditional students--businesspeople, homemakers, and retirees.
Japanese courts in major cities have issued rulings on prepaid tuition fees at private higher education institutions: to be returned or not. Referring to several elite and other private institutions, the Tokyo District Court sentenced them to return the prepaid tuition to students who did not enroll, though they had been admitted.
A Japanese university has filed for bankruptcy protection, citing a decline in its enrollment. The case, the first of its kind, could mark the start of a trend in Japan, where the birthrate -- and, along with it, the pool of college-age students -- has steadily shrunk for more than a decade.
The owner of a private Japanese university was arrested this month and charged with making off with millions of dollars in government subsidies while his institution ran up such huge debts that it was reportedly close to shutting down.
The operators of Kwansei Gakuin University and Seiwa College, both in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, plan to merge in spring 2008, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Wednesday.