6 World Education Blog

The Times Higher Education and Quacquarelli Symonds (THE-QS) have just published the 2009 ranking of the World’s top universities .We compared the ranking of the World’s Top-25 Universities according to THE-QS with the 2008 Academic Ranking of World Universities ARWU.

Overall ranking: THE-QS 2009 versus ARWU 2008

The overall overlap of the two rankings is 72%, with 18 of the World’s Top-25 universities appearing in both the THE-QS and ARWU rankings. This means there are seven universities (more than one in four) that do not appear in each of the other lists.

THE-QS has many more British Universities than ARWU

There are twice as many British universities in the THE-QS ranking of the World’s Top-25 universities than in the ARWU. THE-QS finds that six (24%) of the World’s Top-25 universities are British compared to three (8%) for ARWU.

The difference is particularly striking for the World’s Top-5 universities, where there are four British Universities in the THE-QS (University of Cambridge [2nd], University College London [4th], Imperial College London [5th] and University of Oxford [5th]) compared to only one for the ARWU (University of Cambridge [3rd]).

THE-QS has many fewer public US universities than ARWU

There is only one public US university University of Michigan in the THE-QS ranking compared to six public US universities in the ARWU ranking. The University of California is represented four times in the ARWU ranking (Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco) and not once in the THE-QS ranking.

THE-QS is more international than ARWU

The THE-QS ranking of the World’s Top-25 universities includes more non-US universities than the ARWU ranking: 12 (48%) universities are non-US in THE-QS compared to 7 (28%) in the ARWU. In the THE-QS ranking, six countries are represented: US (13), UK (6), Japan (2), Australia (1), Canada (1), Switzerland (1) and Hong Kong (1). In the ARWU five countries are represented: US (18), UK (3), Japan (2), Switzerland (1) and Canada (1).

Stanford University

It is very striking to see that Stanford University is ranked 2nd in the world according to ARWU and only 16th according to THE-QS.

University of continue reading

The twentieth century saw much technological advancement in many social spheres ranging from the discovery of the radio, the aeroplane, the atomic bomb and the apex was the going to the moon. All these technological advancements had adverse impacts on the life style of the communities around the world. However, most importantly, is the invention of the Internet and the intranet which historic achievement has greatly impacted on the academic life of many universities around the world. The period of the 1990s ushered in a new world order; the beginnings of the idea of globalisation and its immediate impacts on higher education developments. Globalisation represents the international system that is shaping most societies today including university programs. It is a process that is “super charging” the interaction and integration of cultures, politics, business and intellectual elements around the world.

This paper examines the effects of globalization in terms of technological transformations on the development of universities. The pursuit of technological transformation in higher education has become widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa with the extensive pervasiveness of global networks like the Internet and Intranet as institutions struggle to prepare students for effective participation in the emerging global knowledge economy. Technologically based education is further seen as a way to address the increase in the world demand for tertiary education. The one new university per week is required to keep pace with world population growth but the resources necessary are not available. For instance, since the time of the overwhelmingly increased student enrolments in many public universities in Uganda from the 1990s and onwards, existing resources and infrastructure have not increased commensurate to the same increase in the student capacity. Lecture theatres and libraries are flooding and infrastructure and instructional materials and staff are all constrained with the alarmingly increased student populations. Higher education must develop more cost-effective methods so that public resources can be increased and effectively utilized. A lecture theatre in a public university that sits over 300 continue reading

EXISTENTIALISM IN EDUCATION.

INTRODUCTION :

A keen study of quite an amount of existentialist philosophy would reveal that to write about existentialism is neither easy nor simple but a challenging and complex one. If doubts and confusions are left uncleared, one can only say that “contradictions and inconsistencies are fundamental to their thought.”1

Some illustrations of such paradoxes are - Heidegger’s statement -: ‘analyse death to understand life’, Jaspers : ‘Renounce your world and you will return to it’, Santre : You are a free man if you deny God’, Kierkegaard : ‘You are a free man if you accept God”, etc. When once a critique drew the attention of Sartre by his remark. ‘Your philosophy is problematic and ambiguous’, Sartre’s reply was ‘Man does seem to me to be ambiguous.’2

Not only their thought, even their language is obscure. Here is an example of existentialist dialectical confusion : ‘Nothing’ is revealed in dread, but not as something that ‘is’. Neighter can it be taken as an object. Dread is not an apprehension of Nothing. We would say rather : in dread Nothing functions as if at one with WHAT-IS-IN-TOTALITY?3

“Another very significant source of confusion arises out of the different personal lives and convictions of existential philosophers. Kierkegaard, Marcel and Jaspers are theists whereas Sartre and Heideggar are agnostics. Jaspers is a protestant whereas Marcel is a staunch Roman Catholic. Less said the better about the diversities of other existentialist philosophers like Berdyaev, Buber, Tillich and Neibhur.”

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW -:

Just as the whole of Indian philosophy is either an  extension, interpretation, criticism and corroboration of the Vedas and in it the Upanishads or an outright revolt against them, similarly it may be remarked of western philosophy as either a clarification of Socrates or his rejection. One would be still right in saying that the whole of western philosophy is an appendix on Socrates. So it is even true with existentialism that Socrates has been considered to be the first existentialist. Socrates statement : “I am and always have been a man to obey nothing in my nature except the resoning which upon reflection, continue reading