For the first time in 14 years, an American college didn’t crack the top two in a ranking of the best universities in the world, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018 list.
United Kingdom-based Oxford and Cambridge Universities came in No.1 and No. 2, respectively.
Times Higher Ed reviews the top 1,000 universities in the world looking at factors of teaching, research, and influence to rank them.
It reviews quantitative factors, like the number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally, and qualitative factors, like peer surveys, to assemble the ranking.
Read below to see the top 10 universities in the world:
10. University of Pennsylvania (tie)
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Students: 20,361
Number of students per faculty member: 6.5
10. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (tie)
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Students: 19,233
Number of students per faculty member: 14.6
9. University of Chicago
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Students: 13,525
Number of students per faculty member: 6.2
8. Imperial College London
Location: Kensington, London
Students: 15,857
Number of students per faculty member: 11.4
7. Princeton University
Location: Princeton, New Jersey
Students: 7,955
Number of students per faculty member: 8.3
6. Harvard University
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Students: 29,326
Number of students per faculty member: 8.9
Source : Independent
France to impose total ban on mobile phones in schools
France is to impose a total ban on pupils using mobile phones in primary and secondary schools starting in September 2018, its education minister has confirmed.
Phones are already forbidden in French classrooms but starting next school year, pupils will be barred from taking them out at breaks, lunch times and between lessons.
Teachers and parents are divided over a total ban, however, with some saying children must be able to “live in their time”. In France, some 93 per cent of 12 to 17-year-olds own mobile phones.
Source : Telegraph
SNOW vs Schools…
Hundreds of schools across England and Wales have closed due to snowy weather.
More than 400 schools are shut in Wales. And in Birmingham, the city council has closed all of the schools it runs.
Hundreds more have closed in counties across huge swathes of central England as snow continues to fall.
So has it become easier to close a school?
The short answer is no. There has not been any change in the rules governing school closures.
The guidelines from the education departments in England and Wales are clear. They stress schools can close only in truly exceptional circumstances, when there is no other option.
This is because schools have to be open a set number of days a year.
However, there are no systematic central records held on how many school days are lost to poor weather each year.
Source : BBC
Oxford university disowns Chris Imafidon
Our records show that Chris Imafidon has no affiliation with Oxford University or any of its colleges or departments – Varsity’s media relations manager
The University of Oxford has disclaimed that a Nigerian, Chris Imafidon is a professor at the university.
Saturday PUNCH on November 18, 2017, published an interview in which Imafidon claimed that he had overcome autism to achieve greatness and that no child was born with an inferior gene. The interview went viral on the web, where his rich profile abounds and appears at every search of his name.
Questions were raised by concerned members of the public after the publication of the interview.
Local and some international media have described Imafidon as a professor at Oxford University and at other times, as a professor of University of Oxford (Keble College). However, in their responses to Saturday PUNCH’s enquiries, University of Oxford and one of its independent constituent institutions, Keble College, denied having any connection with him.
Over the last two weeks, Saturday PUNCH has then made several efforts to get Imafidon to substantiate his purported link with the Oxford University or Keble College.
Source : Punch
Pregnancy at 19 changed my life – Lekki British School owner
Dr Abiodun Laja is the Executive Director of the Lekki British School, Lekki, Lagos. She started a private school at 27 and recently celebrated her 40th anniversary in the education sector. In this interview, she told SAMSON FOLARIN how becoming pregnant at 19 changed her career path and the challenges she had faced over the years
You started a private school at 27 at a time when such venture was a preserve of retired teachers. How did it happen?
Back in my secondary school days at St. Louis, Ibadan, I was good at mathematics and my father, who was an accountant, felt I would make a good accountant. Unfortunately, I had a baby immediately I left secondary school. My father was very angry with me and I was angry with myself as well. He took the baby from me at 11 months and I went to London to study. The early motherhood, however, changed my perception. While I was nursing the baby, my mind switched from being an accountant to education of children.
Read more : http://punchng.com/pregnancy-at-19-changed-my-life-lekki-british-school-owner/
24-year-old Nigerian Doctor Toluwalase Awoyemi emerges winner of the 2018 Rhodes Scholarships
Out of the 2,948 applications received from intending scholars across the world, Toluwalase and Emmanuelle were selected to be among the 15 most qualified candidates that made the final cut and eventually emerged winners. According to Ndidi Nwuneli, a member of the West Africa Selection Committee, it was a keenly contested award. He said, “All fifteen finalists were remarkably brilliant with outstanding individual qualities but we could only select two. For Emmanuelle and Toluwalase, this is an award well deserved, and we have no doubt that they will go on to excel in their chosen field of study and do the continent proud.”
Federal cabinet approves 6 new private universities
The Federal Executive Council on Wednesday approved six new private universities.
They are Admiralty Univerity, Ibusa, Delta State; Spiritan University, Nneochi, Abia State; Precious Cornerstone University, Ibadan, Oyo State.
Others are Pamo University of Medical Sciences, Port Harcourt, Rivers State; Atiba University, Oyo State; and Eko University of Medical and Health Sciences Lagos.
The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, told journalists after the FEC meeting, that more requests for private universities’ approval were underway.
He said the Nigerian Universities Commission would take the issue of accreditation very seriously “and if any university fails to meet their standard, we are going to deregister their courses and if enough courses are deregistered, it will lead to the closure of the university.”
Source : Dailytrust
Nigerian columnist leads exceptional Nigerian researchers in the UK with a qualification
The overseeing editorial manager of The Nigerian News London, Angula Jessica drove other Nigerian individuals from her MBA class at the Coventry University to come finish with a refinement. Angula moved on from the Benue State University, Makurdi in 2013 and had enlisted among other Nigerian understudies at the Coventry University United Kingdom for her MBA in (Oil and Gas Management) in 2016. She came best of her class with a First Class in an occasion that was held at the Guild Hall, Buckingham City, London.
ASUP poly lecturers suspend 15-day-old strike
Polytechnic lecturers have suspended a nationwide strike they started on November 13 over failure of government to meet their demands.
Chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) told a press conference in Bauchi that the decision to suspend the strike came at the group’s 14 conference in Bauchi after it reached an agreement and signed a memorandum of settlement and action.
The union has previously met with officials and ministries of education and labour, alongside the National Salaries and Wages Commission, Budget office of the federation, office of Head of Civil service and office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
“While we are not unaware of the government over the years to willfully renege on agreements of this nature with labour unions including ours, it is the considered view of our union that the contents of this MoS be given a chance of implementation particularly as there is a mechanism for monitoring and evaluation embedded in the MoS.
Source: DailyTrust
Education Quality: The hard choices we cannot sidestep – Okebukola
Former Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Chairman of Council, Crawford University and Chairman, Board of Trustees, Caleb University, Professor Peter Okebukola has thrown his weight behind President Muhammadu Buhari on the need for quality teachers, adding that to reconstruct the shattered education mirror, there are hard choices we cannot sidestep.
Okebukola, while delivering convocation lecture on Reconstructing the Shattered Education Mirror: Hard Choices We Cannot Sidestep at the McPherson University said: ‘’Between 1965 and 1970, Nigeria contributed the highest in Africa to the international literature in science, engineering, medicine, social sciences and arts.’’ He posited that two major factors conspired to trigger off what is now regarded as the tipping point for poor quality. The first, he noted was the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which brought in its wake, the devaluation of the naira, adding: “More or less overnight, the money available to educational institutions especially universities depreciated by about 200%.”
Source : Vanguard