The service, based at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP), will remain open until December 15th 2010. During this time, a multilingual team of advisers will be on hand to provide assistance with the immigration and police authorities, employment agencies, transport, insurance and housing. The team, which includes speakers of Hindi, Arabic and Chinese will also be on hand to help students who are having difficulties understanding French bureaucratic language.

Colombian Lillian-Sally Michelin, one of the advisers, said: “I think it is very important when you come from another country to have someone to show you the steps.”

Sylviane Tarsot-Gillery, managing director of the CIUP, said: “Foreign students’ greatest difficulty is the administration. It is important for them to find the answers to all their questions; not just information, but how to apply for legal status, register for student benefits.”

Around 36% of France’s international student population live in and around the French capital, according to the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, and the advice service expects to handle more than 4,000 students between now and December.

For more information on studying in France, subscribe to i-studentadvisor and be the first to know when the first ever edition of i-studentadvisor Europe is available free online.

Research from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research found that Morocco was the largest provider of foreign students to France, totalling around 30,000 individuals.

12% of France’s 1.4 million strong student population are foreign, more than a third of whom are based in Paris or the Ile-de-France region.

44% of those foreign students hailed from Africa, followed by 24% from Asia, 22.6% from Europe, and 8% from North and South America.

The research found that the largest foreign group, Moroccan students, were most likely to study science, engineering and technology subjects. Their 27,100 Chinese counterparts, a steadily increasing figure, are “well represented” in business, engineering and arts schools.

Almost 40% of foreign students in France are studying doctorates.

Look out for our i-studentadvisor Europe guide later this year, covering France and a variety of other European nations.

This years’ conference, which runs for four days, is subtitled ‘The New Dynamics of Higher Education and Research for Societal Change and Development’.  On the agenda for discussion are the growth in student numbers, the new dynamics and policy implications and the social responsibility of higher education. The aim of the conference is an internationally agreed set of actions ‘to ensure that higher education and research play a strategic role in knowledge creation and sharing for a more sustainable, inclusive and development-oriented future’ says the UNESCO website.

Inside Higher Ed published an article today in which Nicholas Burnett, Assistant Director General for education at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization discusses the agenda in more detail.

“The first question is what are these new dynamics? I think there are many, but there are four in particular that we really think are changing the face of higher education,” said Burnett.

“In no particular order — and they’re all linked — one is just the accelerating demand for higher education. In the last seven years, we’ve just had extraordinary expansion — with an increase of about 51 million postsecondary students from 2001-8.”

See the full article on Inside Higher Ed to read all Nicholas Burnett’s points.

University World News, the official media partner of the conference and will be providing updates from the conference on their website throughout the conference.

New York Film Academy

Each summer, hundreds of teenagers from all over the world are taught film-making and acting at the New York Film Academy summer camp programmes. The one of a kind, hands-on film and acting camps are designed to teach you the fundamentals of movie making and acting in film.

Camps this year are being held at locations in:
•    New York City
•    Universal Studios, Los Angeles, CA
•    London, England
•    Disney Studios, Orlando, FL
•    Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
•    Paris, France
•    Florence, Italy

These camps are ideal for any high school student looking to kick-start their education and career in film. Camps include courses in film, acting, broadcast journalism, 3D animation, screenwriting and music video. For more information and details of how to apply click here – Summer Film and Acting Camps.

If you are interested in international courses in media, arts and design check out i-MAD, i-studentadvisor’s media, arts and design magazine. We will be launching the new volume 5 issue in June, but in the mean time you can browse our previous issue or see the i-MAD section in the i-studentadvisor Subject Guide.