TERMINALFOUR, a digital marketing and web content management platform for higher education, announced the results of its 2017 ‘Global Higher Education Survey’, which highlighted significant concerns among higher education institutions about student recruitment targets due to proposed visa/travel restrictions. In a survey of 391 higher education professionals from 333 unique higher education institutions, 56 per cent stated that travel restrictions will directly impact on their institution’s ability to meet recruitment targets. The survey was carried out among web, marketing, recruitment and leadership professionals in higher education across the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia and South Africa. The survey also found that 37 per cent of higher education professionals have high levels of job insecurity. When asked to rate their personal job security in the context of Government policy, student recruitment challenges and internal restructuring, just 28 percent of respondents stated that they feel highly secure in their current role. – ESCHOOL News, eCampus News. Read more

The number of administrative personnel at Swedish universities has risen seven times as fast as the number of academic staff since 2000, and they now fill nearly half of all university jobs.  Daniel Waldenström, professor of economics at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm and a visiting professor at the Paris School of Economics, published the figures as part of a discussion of economic issues with five other economists on the website Ekonomistas.  Drawing on data from Statistics Sweden, he said the increase in academic staff in Sweden in the period 2001-13 was 14 per cent, while there was an increase in administrative personnel at universities of 98 per cent. The increase of administrative staff in the Swedish higher education sector was also more than double the increase in the public administration sector in general in Sweden over this period, which was 38%. – Jan Petter Myklebust, University World News. Read More

A new data analysis portal has been launched by Education New Zealand to support the country’s $4.5bn industry and provide institutions and government officials with access to high-quality information and market intelligence. IntelliLab, launched at last month’s NZIEC in Auckland, provides users with an interactive interface of international student numbers from the past five years which can be manipulated by market, sector, and region. Research papers from ENZ on areas such as in-market activity, student experience research and brand health are also available to download on the platform. “Using this data, providers can have fast, easy access to intelligence with a focus on their region and sector and use it to better inform their market development efforts,” ENZ’s Grant McPherson said. The tool aims to enhance stakeholder understanding of international education through data, research and insights. – Anton Crace, The PIE News. Read more

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s pledge that half of all young people should go on to higher education is within a whisker of becoming true as official figures revealed that 49 per cent of those in England are expected to have entered advanced studies by the age of 30. The government’s measure of higher education participation has reached its highest level since the introduction of £9,000 tuition fees in 2012, equaling the previous record of 49 per cent since the annual estimates were first produced in 2006. The figures show that the participation rate rose by 1.4 percentage points last year, thanks to a 10,000 rise in the number of those aged 17-30 going to university for the first time in 2015-16, including full-time and part-time learners. The participation rate among people entering higher education immediately after leaving school also reached a record level last year, with more than 27 per cent of all 18-year-olds going into higher education and growing at a faster rate than the increase in the population. – Richard Adams, The Guardian. Read More

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for their detection of gravitational waves, a development scientists believe could give vital clues to the origins of the universe. The three American physicists “made decisive contributions” to LIGO, an observatory instrument that enabled scientists to physically detect the waves, which Albert Einstein predicted a century ago in his theory of relativity. Gravitational waves are “ripples” in the fabric of space and time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the universe, according to the California Institute of Technology. The award was given half to Weiss from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the other half jointly to Barish and Thorne from Caltech. Around 1000 people have worked on the development of the technology over four decades, according to Weiss and the Nobel committee. – Angela Dewan and Manisha Ganguly, CNN. Read more