Dean of Engineering Professor Gary Hawley and the University’s Vice Chancellor Professor Kevin Edge recently attended the 90th anniversary celebrations of the HIT in China, taking place in the official ceremonial proceedings held at the HIT sports stadium.

Professor Edge said: “We have had informal research links with HIT in the past but this agreement is an important step as we seek to develop a substantial and mutually beneficial partnership with one of the top universities in China.”

The visit also included the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to promote the relationship between the two departments of engineering.

Professor Hawley outlined the new programme for elite engineering students which will allow the top 5% of students, who are in the Elite Scholar Programme at HIT, to move into the BEng in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath. The scheme is expected to start next year.

The University of Bath is one of the leading universities in the UK, ranked in the top fifteen of The Guardian, Times, Sunday Times and Independent national league tables. It is also a member of the 1994 Group, which represents nineteen of the UK’s leading student-focused research-intensive universities to promote excellence and teaching.

The second International Meeting of Universia Presidents, which was opened by Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón, was held to coincide with the bicentennial of Latin American independence. The university presidents announced plans to create a new scholarship programme that allows the movement of 15,000 students and 3,000 scholars.

The new scheme, proposed by Universia, the world’s largest network of Spanish and Portuguese-speaking universities, aims to make universities agents of social cohesion and facilitate more effective knowledge and technology transfers.

Universia was founded in 2000 by the Spanish University Rectors’ Board and was backed by financial support from the Santander group whose CEO Emilio Botín chairs the group. Since it was founded, the group has sought to develop collaboration among Ibero-American universities.

The group have had four main areas of development based on collaboration between universities using internet technology but now it is making a move into a more tangible transfer of knowledge based on greater student mobility.

Universia meets with its presidents every five years, with the last meeting in 2005 held at the University of Seville and next proposed for Brazil in 2015.

The China capital plans to renovate the curriculum and focus on improving the quality of college facilities to attract more students from overseas. There are also plans to make connections with Ivy League universities in the USA to enable international exchange programmes.

According to 2009 Ministry of Education statistics, last year 71,000 overseas students studied in Beijing, the majority of whom originate from South Korea, Japan and the United States. With the new strategy to increase the international student intake, the city aims to increase this number by another 10,000.

Last month i-studentadvisor reported a rise in the number of overseas students studying throughout China in 2009. Last year nearly 240,000 foreign students enrolled to study at Chinese institutions.

The aim to increase the number of overseas students in China and Beijing will be assisted by Barack Obama’s pledge last year to send 100,000 US Students to China over the next four years.

This new effort to allow academic exchange programmes between the US and Cuba has come as a result of Obama’s willingness to forge new ties with Cuba when he proposed an “equal partnership” with all nations of the Americas at the Summit of the Americas in April.

In the letter, signed by NAFSA and seventeen other organisations, the organisations praise Obama’s plans of a new beginning with Cuba and urge him to change the restrictions on exchange programmes between the US and Cuba as a vital step in this new relationship. The letter states:

“As you recently noted in your address to a group of students in Turkey, “exchanges can break down the walls between us.” However, Cuba currently remains the only country in the world where the United States government restricts study by American students, as well as academic travel by bona fide teachers and researchers….One way in which to advance opportunities for young people to engage internationally would be to lift the current restrictions and permit academic travel to Cuba via general license. We would also welcome a trend of granting US visas for Cubans coming for exchange purposes”.

The full letter is available to view and download here. NAFSA have also published details of the legislation and will update any changes on the Public Policy page of their website.

“All of us must recognise that education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st century and in too many Muslim communities there remains under-investment in these areas”, the President said.

Obama plans to promote cooperation between US and Islamic universities through exchange programmes and scholarships as well as online and distance learning for muslim students.

See University World News for full story.

Mohammad al-Momani, a political science professor at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan said last week in advance of the President’s visit:

“The level of optimism is pretty significant. We haven’t seen this for a long time. People believe that Obama understands that there is a need for concrete action on the Arab-Israeli conflict and that he has shown … significant commitment to [resolving] the conflict.”

The focus of this plan is on the science and technology sector and coincides with the administrations earlier announcement to concentrate funding on science and engineering education, i-studentadvisor will be covering this story in the upcoming issue of i-SECT, our Science, Engineering, Computing and Technology magazine which will be online in July.