Concerns over university English language requirements
At least 30 universities in Vietnam have announced they would prioritise or enrol students who have International English Language Testing System (IELTS) certificate scores from 4.0 to 6.5 and use the English language proficiency certificates as part of admission criteria, but concerns have been raised about inequality for students in rural areas, reports
Viet Nam News.
Many people support the move to help improve the quality of enrolment. Vu Thi Hien, head of the department of training management under the Foreign Trade University (FTU), said the FTU would admit students based on their high school performance and English competency. Hien said many training programmes in universities use English as the main language, even the language of instruction.
Outrage over university COVID vaccine trial scandal
Nature 03 April 2021
A clinical trial of COVID-19 vaccines in Peru has sparked outrage and triggered a series of high-profile resignations at universities and in government. Politicians, researchers and some of their family members who were not enrolled as trial participants nevertheless received vaccines, breaching standard protocols. Investigations are ongoing as the country struggles to inoculate its general population with limited doses, writes Luke Taylor for
Nature.
The scandal emerged on 10 February, when local media revealed that in October 2020, then-president Martín Vizcarra had received two doses of a vaccine developed by the Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical group Sinopharm. At the time, a phase III clinical trial was under way to test the vaccine at two universities in Peru; Vizcarra was not part of the trial. Days later, it emerged that a group of around 470 other people – including 100 high-profile indiv
Rise of one-stop recruitment shops aided by shift online
In 2006, when Edwin van Rest stepped off the plane at Schiphol (Amsterdam) after studying in Osaka, Japan, for two years he expected that his new masters in industrial engineering would be the ticket to his career.
Within a year, however, driven by his friends’ reactions – typified by, “Wow, I wish I had known about those opportunities to study abroad”– to his stories of being immersed in a different culture, he and two friends founded Mastersportal.
Two years later, they folded this on-line one-stop-information and application platform into the umbrella organisation Studyportals, which includes Bachelors Portal and PhD Portal.
Unemployed PhDs on a hunger strike over their plight
Jobless PhD graduates have gone on a hunger strike and are calling for a sit-in on 31 March in response to police action during a previous protest at the premises of the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research about a policy that is preventing universities from employing them.
Video clips and photos about the health situation of hunger strikers have been circulating on social media.
In the meantime, the ministry and representatives of the group are in disagreement over the progress and substance of negotiations over the matter.
The ministry said a plan had been negotiated, but the protesters stated that talks were taking place in bad faith and had not yet been finalised.
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