The International Quest to Define and Improve Student Success

On November 4-5, 2018 the Global Forum will take place at the V Hotel Curio Collection by Hilton in Dubai, UAE. This year’s theme is “The International Quest to Define and Improve Student Success. A global forum on student well-being and outcomes in higher education”. Don’t miss your chance to register at the early bird rate by 30 September!

The knowledge partner of the 2018 Global Forum is the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) in Dubai. Each year, the Forum brings together policy-makers, researchers, faculty, and practitioners to delve into some of the most salient topics in international higher education—this year, student well-being and outcomes in HE.

The Forum’s keynote talk will be delivered by Sir Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham and one of the world’s leading thinkers on student well-being.  The topic is “Improving Student Success- The positive and mindful university”. Other compelling sessions include “Putting happiness and well-being at the heart of education”, "International and national approaches to student success”, and “Big Data- the search for new insights”.

Speakers and delegates to date hail from a range of organisations including KHDA, Quality Assurance Agency (UK), JISC (UK), TEQSA (Australia), CPE (Singapore), SP Jain, Zayed University, Heriot-Watt University, TecMilenio University, and i-graduate, and locations including UK, USA, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, UAE, and more. Get £200 off your fee by registering by 30 September.

The Call for Proposals is now closed. Submitters of proposals will be contacted shortly.

15 August 2018

Tertiary Edge: Employment rates and earnings premiums of Germany’s university graduates

Rachael Merola, Senior Researcher, OBHE

Germany has been a dynamic and powerful force in higher education in recent years. It eliminated tuition fees at public universities in 2014, has 44 universities in the world’s top university rankings, and enrolls 15% of all tertiary students in the EU. This article explores the growth of Germany’s tertiary education, looking at data on attainment, employment rates and earnings premiums.  

Full article available for members.

7 August 2018

Counting Everything (except outcomes)- Looking for data on student success in Kenya

Richard Garrett, Director, OBHE

Mature higher education systems struggle with student success data- what to collect, what to report, how to meet the needs of different stakeholders- so what do less developed systems do? 

Full article available for members.

20 July 2018 

Usual and Unusual. Looking for data on student success in Singapore

Richard Garrett, Director, OBHE

As part of OBHE’s 2018 focus on student success and outcomes, we are working a number of country case studies. The goal is to summarize how specific countries define and report student success. Our series selects countries from various global rankings of national higher education systems, such as QS and Universitas 21. Diversity by region and size informed our selection.

Our series kicks off with Singapore, ranked ninth best higher education system in the world in 2018 by Universitas 21. The U21 ranking includes a number of “output” measures, but only two concern student outcomes:

1)      Percentage of the population aged 25–64 with a tertiary qualification
2)      Unemployment rates among tertiary educated aged 25–64 years compared with unemployment rates for those with only upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education

The first metric is about graduate quantity in relative terms, while the second uses employment as a proxy for quality. Together, these two metrics account for only 6% of U21’s scoring model.

Inevitably, such rankings rely on data available across multiple countries, which aids comparability but obscures national data differences. The question OBHE wants to ask is what else can we learn about student success in Singapore? The two student success metrics employed by U21 both span forty-year periods, and therefore say very little about any recent innovation around student success definitions, data or reporting.

Singapore covers the basics when it comes to student success and outcomes data- number of graduates and recent graduate employment. The country has also pioneered reporting of TNE student outcomes. 

Full article available for members.

27 June 2018

What do we know about the outcomes of EMI courses in higher education?

Carolyn Walker, OBHE Associate; Consultant in International HE; Former Academic Director at INTO

According to Dr Denise Abreu e Lima (President of Languages without Borders, Brazil), speaking at the British Council’s recent Going Global 2018 conference in Malaysia, “Language is the structure of internationalisation. If a university wants to internationalise they need to invest in language and a language policy”. For many higher education institutions worldwide, recognition of this fact has helped to drive a growing global trend: the teaching of courses through the medium of English, otherwise known as ‘English Medium Instruction’ (EMI) or alternatively ‘English Taught Programmes’ (ETPs). This relatively recent development has been described as a “galloping phenomenon” which is “pandemic in proportion” and “the single most significant current trend in internationalizing higher education”.

Full article available for members.

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