THE NEW YORK TIMES: Under the new program, graduates of top-ranked global colleges can move to Britain for two years, even without a job offer. But critics say the plan nurtures global inequalities.
LONDON — When Britain started a program this week offering a two-year visa to graduates from some top global universities, Nikhil Mane, an Indian computer science student at New York University, welcomed the news.
“I was happy,” said Mr. Mane, 23, whose university was on the list. “It’s a good way to pursue our dreams.”
More than 5,000 miles away, Adeola Adepoju, 22, a biochemistry student at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Nigeria, also read the announcement with great interest. But he had the opposite reaction.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Mr. Adepoju said. “No university from the third world is ranked.”
Britain’s “High Potential Individual” visa program allows graduates from 37 top-rated world universities in Australia, Canada, China, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the United States to come to the country for two years even if they do not have a job offer.
A majority of universities on the list are in the United States, including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Diego.
The government said the plan would attract the world’s “brightest and best” and benefit the British economy. Critics, however, say the plan nurtures global inequalities and discriminates against most developing countries. » | Emma Bubola | Friday, June 3, 2022
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Friday, June 03, 2022
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), a welfare body for sex workers, said it estimated the number of people approaching it for help had doubled in the last year as students struggled to make ends meet.
“(The government) know the cuts and the austerity programs and the removing of grants, they know when they remove those resources they know it drives women further into poverty,” Sarah Walker from the ECP told Reuters.
“The way that women survive poverty is often through sex work. The government knows that and they don’t seem to care frankly.”
Young people have been the hardest hit by economic slowdown with youth unemployment now accounting for 1.03 million of the 2.64 unemployed, the highest level since 1992. » | Michael Holden | London | Reuters | Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Republicans in state senate pass 'self-defence' measure despite resistance from higher education officialsThe holders of concealed handgun licences are set to be allowed to carry weapons into public college buildings and classrooms in Texas, after Republicans in the state senate approved the measure as part of a universities spending bill.
Republican senator Jeff Wentworth had been unable to gain the votes he needed to pass the issue as its own bill after it met stiff resistance from higher education officials, particularly from within the University of Texas UT-System.
The senate's 12 Democrats had mostly worked together to block the measure but were powerless to stop it on Monday when a majority in the 31-member chamber got it added to the spending bill as an amendment. » | Associated Press | Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Bahrain's authorities have cancelled the scholarships of several students who have demonstrated against the government in Britain.
Students in the UK now face the prospect of having to return home at the end of the summer, once they are unable to pay tuition fees for the next academic year.
The Bahraini Embassy in London says the decisions are not final and affect a relatively small number of students, but Bahraini opposition groups in the UK say they know of at least 35 students who have been affected and expect many more to come forward.
Charlie Angela reports
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
BBC: The rules for student visas into the UK are to be much tougher - after fears that this route of entry is being used dishonestly.
Home Secretary Theresa May said student visas were being abused and "too many were here to work and not to study".
She announced plans to cut the number of student visas by up to 80,000 - about a quarter of the current numbers.
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper warned that rules must not damage an industry worth £5bn a year.
Mrs May told the House of Commons that the misuse of student visas had become a "symbol of a broken and abused immigration system". » | Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Monday, December 07, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Iranian police fired tear gas and live bullets as they fought back thousands of unarmed protesters on the streets of Tehran.
There were bloody clashes as young people launched a fresh wave of anti-government protests on the country's official Students Day.
Police used warning shots, baton charges and gas but failed to stop rallies, sit-ins and campus marches across the capital.
Universities in several cities, including Tehran's top seats of learning, were sealed off as guards checked identity cards of people trying to join the student demonstrations.
Earlier in the day, the authorities detained 23 members of a protest group of grieving mothers. They included the mother of Neda Agha-Soltan, known as the "Angel of Freedom", who was shot by pro-government militia at the height of demonstrations against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election in June.
Hajar Rostami-Motlaq has enraged the authorities by condemning pro-government students who accused British agents of killing Miss Soltan.
She was later released but friends expressed concern for other members of the protest group, Mourning Mothers of Iran, who were rounded up at a weekly protest in Tehran's Laleh Park.
Supporters of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi chanted "Death to the dictator" and "Do not be scared. We are all together", according to witnesses at the rallies on university campuses. >>> Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent | Monday, December 07, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: December 7 is traditionally the date when the Iranian Government stages rallies to commemorate the deaths of three student demonstrators killed by the Shah’s security forces in 1953. The tables have now turned. Today the security forces will attempt to crush student demonstrations against its own brutality and repression.
On campuses across Iran, students outraged by the regime’s alleged theft of the presidential election in June, and the subsequent suppression of the opposition, will attempt to hijack the state-sponsored Students’ Day rallies — just as they did last month’s commemoration of the US embassy siege and the annual Palestinian solidarity rallies in September. The regime cannot cancel these events without losing face, but it is doing its utmost to stop today’s protests.
Yesterday security forces began to seal off campuses in Tehran and warned nearby householders not to open their doors to protesters or let anyone take pictures from their roofs. The regime has cut internet services to hamper the opposition’s preparations, and banned journalists employed by foreign news organisations from working on the streets. Dozens of student leaders are understood to have been arrested. >>> Martin Fletcher | Monday, December 07, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama, the US president, has strongly criticised censorship in his first public appearance in China, veering directly into one of the most sensitive areas of Communist party policy.
Mr Obama told an audience of 400 Chinese students that freedom of "expression, and worship, of access to information and political participation" were "universal rights".
He said: "They should be available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities, whether they are in the United States, China or any nation".
The Chinese government did its best to carefully choreograph Mr Obama's maiden tour, going as far as to hand-pick each student in the auditorium.
Mr Obama was allowed to open the floor to questions, but at least two of the four students he called upon were later discovered to be members of the Communist Youth League, the university arm of the party.
Nevertheless, a question selected by the US embassy gave the president an opportunity to tackle a more contentious topic. Asked for his opinion of the "Great Firewall of China", a censorship program that strips the internet of any political dissent, Mr Obama said he was a "big believer in openness".
He added: "The more freely information flows, the stronger a society becomes. Citizens can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves. That generates new ideas and encourages creativity. >>> Malcolm Moore in Shanghai | Monday, November 16, 2009
GLOBE AND MAIL: Obama holds town hall in China: Pressing for freedoms on China's own turf, President Barack Obama said Monday that individual expression is not an American ideal but a universal right that should be available to all. >>> AP video | Monday, November 16, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: China rounds up dissidents as President Obama touches down in Beijing: Chinese officials have rounded up dozens of Beijings’s tiny coterie of activists and petitioners in case any dissident tries to approach President Obama, who arrived in the city today.
The arrests continued to gather momentum even as Mr Obama told an unprecedented question-and-answer session with Shanghai students that freedom of information and expression were vital for a stronger, more creative society. >>> Jane Macartney in Beijing | Monday, November 16, 2009
LE TEMPS: En Chine, Barack Obama évoque des «droits universels» : Le président américain Barack Obama a prôné lundi à Shanghai la liberté d’expression, de culte et d’information, y compris sur l’Internet, lors de sa première visite en Chine. Il a ensuite rejoint Pékin pour des entretiens politiques avec son homologue Hu Jinato. >>> ATS | Lundi 16 Novembre 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Politically correct textbooks are distorting key concepts and historical facts.
Most Americans understand history as an objective accounting of past events. In recent years, however, textbook publishers have come under increasing criticism for rewriting history. Claims are presented as facts while controversial material is whitewashed or omitted.
Today these trends are quite apparent in the way public school history books address Islam. In his 2008 study "Islam in the Classroom: what the textbooks tell us," Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council (ATC), reviewed 10 of the nation's most widely used junior and senior high school history textbooks. The results should disturb anyone interested in conveying to our children a truthful history of the religion whose extreme adherents drive so many of today's tragic headlines.
At a time when America is locked in a battle of ideas with Islamic extremists and other enemies of freedom, accurate knowledge is indispensable. Yet, Sewall's findings underscore how political correctness is distorting the next generation's understanding of this battle.
Let's be clear. Religion is by nature a sensitive topic to teach in the classroom. And in a world where stereotypes wrongly tar all Muslims as being prone to violence, it's understandable that schools would err on the side of caution. Indeed, they should affirm the piety and charity practiced by hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world, an acknowledgement that should be extended to Christians as well. At the same time, textbooks shouldn't cower from covering the violent periods of Muslim conquest or the Islamic beliefs that fundamentalists exploit for violent ends.
Sewall found that many textbooks gloss over or delete important facts. For example, in the 1990s, "jihad" – which has many meanings, among them "sacred" or "holy" struggle but also "holy war" – was defined in the Houghton Mifflin junior high school book only as a struggle "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil."
The many acts of violence committed on behalf of Islam in the past decade have made that definition incomplete, to say the least. Yet, as ATC notes, "by 2005, Houghton Mifflin apparently had removed jihad from its entire series of social studies textbooks." >>> Gary Bauer* | Wednesday, April 22, 2009
* Gary Bauer is a former undersecretary of the Department of Education under President Reagan. He is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families.
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