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.
A foundation hopes to open a university in North Korea in 2009. The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology University would be foreign funded, with one major contribution and other donations. The project has been delayed due to severe international tensions.
The growth of Singapore's private education may face interruption as complaints have increased over the past few years. For instance, a private higher education institution has been sued for misleading advertisement of a program and breaking promises to students, and even a widely-recognized private institute has been castigated. A fear is that improper behavior undermines Singapore's aspirations to be an international education hub.
P. Martin. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS 2002), volume 2393 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, page 77-91. Springer, (2002)
N. Fuchs. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS 2005), volume 3596 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, page 51-51. Springer, (2005)