All Posts Tagged With: "international"

Eight universities’ departments among top 50 worldwide

University of Toronto (Jessica Darmanin)

The QS World University Subject Rankings 2013 are out now. The London-based company’s report offers a rare peek at how our school’s history, engineering and law programs—30 subjects in all—are viewed internationally.

Unsurprisingly, the top three universities from the Medical Doctoral category of the Maclean’s University Rankings—the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia and McGill University—are also the top Canadian schools on the list. Those three are top five in Canada in 29 of 30 subjects and top 50 worldwide in many.

The highest ranked Canadian subject is geography at the University of British Columbia, which is tenth globally. There are also several subjects in the top 15: environmental science at UBC along with medicine, philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, sociology, geography, education, English and history at University of Toronto.

Continue reading High grades for Canadian schools in subject rankings

A fake medical student, a fake gun & Dalton McGuinty

McGill U. medical students (Andrew Tolson)

1. After nine years as premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty stepped down last night and prorogued the legislature. By 9 p.m., the newspapers had stories suggesting he’ll run for the federal Liberals against Justin Trudeau. Paul Wells writes that he would be astonished by that. “But then, McGuinty has already astonished me once tonight,” he adds. Wells explores the Teflon Premier’s legacy and examines a (possibly) telling recent speech.

2. A man rejected from medical school at New Zealand’s Auckland University decided to go anyway. He spent two years attending classes, labs, and hospital placements and was only caught when a classmate put his name on a group assignment.

3. A 28-year-old woman who was walking to the University of Windsor Monday was told by a man carrying a fake gun to hand over a computer bag. The woman described the gun as  “two sticks taped together.” The University of Windsor Campus Police arrested and charged a 21-year-old.

Continue reading What students are talking about today (October 16th edition)

A “white pride” club, Turkey Syndrome and dead dogs

Clip from YouTube

1. Fourteen lifeguards in El Monte, Calif. were fired for a spoof video featuring Korean pop singer PSY’s signature horse-riding dance moves. Their “Lifeguard Style” video was an homage to the viral hit “Gangnam Style.” Officials say they were fired for using city property improperly, but one of the fired lifeguards says she was told by the city that they found the video “disgusting.”

2. An American student at Towson University is planning a “white-pride organization.” Matthew Heimbach, a U.S. history major, sparked controversy last year when his Youth for Western Civilization group criticized Islam and same-sex marriage. Heimbach says whites are discriminated against. Out of respect for free speech, university officials say the group will be tolerated.

3. About 2,000 people at the University of Guelph set a world record on Saturday by packaging 315,000 emergency relief meals in a single hour. The food help fight famine in Mauritania.

Continue reading What students are talking about today (Sept. 10 edition)

Helena Guergis, student housing, Obama and Occupy

Helena Guergis (Darren Calabrese/CP)

1. The University of Alberta’s class of first-year law students will include Helena Guergis, a former junior cabinet minister who had a very public spat with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Perhaps she’s studying up for her appeal after her lawsuit against the PM was dismissed last week.

2. Students in Fredericton, N.B. have their pick of where to live, due to declining local enrollment.

3. Students in booming Saskatchewan have trouble finding anywhere to live. Vianne Timmons, president of the University of Regina, says a student stopped her on the street to ask if she knew any rentals. New residences are coming.

Continue reading What students are talking about today (Aug. 30 edition)

A Waterloo start-up provides courses on smartphones

From ClevrU

To hear Dean Pacey describe online learning is a lesson in how the Internet—despite its vastness—can actually be a very personal place. In fact, taking courses over a computer, he believes, has the potential to make education more intimate and effective than any typical class-teacher setting, which is often full of distractions.

“When I go to university and I sign up for psych 100, I’m sitting with 1,500 other students with one talking head who I can’t hear and who may or may not speak English well at the front of the room,” he says. “How is that a rich experience?”

By comparison, Pacey imagines a world in which students in any country can pick and choose the courses they’d like to take over the Internet from the best international schools, many of which are in Canada. These courses would feature video lectures, online chats and news feeds related to the content, and would be delivered in whatever language the student preferred. Even more surprising: while the course content could be viewed on a computer screen or tablet, it would be designed, first and foremost, for smartphones—making the “classroom” entirely mobile and available anytime, anywhere.

Continue reading University? There’s an app for that

Luka Rocco Magnotta arrested in Berlin, Germany

Update (11:00 a.m. EST): Police in Berlin, Germany have arrested Magnotta.

With an international manhunt underway for Luka Rocca Magnotta, the weekend papers worked overtime to fill in details surrounding the case of the fugitive who police allege is responsible for the heinous killing and dismemberment of Lin Jun, a foreign student in Montreal.

Here is just some of what journalists have turned up:

1. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has talked to Chinese officials about the case. “I just spoke to China’s ambassador to Canada to convey my deep condolences on the senseless killing of Chinese student Jun Lin,” read a message sent Friday through Baird’s Twitter account.2. Lin was in Montreal to attend school, but his real goal was to find love. A three-byline story in the Globe and Mail suggests the Chinese native’s stated ambition was to marry. “He was in computers, and he was looking for love,” a former classmate told the Globe team.

3. Lin’s online presence was complicated. A second Globe story reported from Beijing reports that while the student went to see The Smurfs movie in 3D and liked to post cat photos on social media, his Internet persona also revealed a troubled side. Reports the Globe’s Mark MacKinnon from Beijing: “On Valentine’s Day last year, he posted a computer-altered photograph of himself with wild purple hair and a cracked face that turns grey around a mouth of broken and missing teeth. ‘My self-portrait,’ he wrote beneath the repulsive image.”

4. Lin loved nothing more than to go to dinner with friends. “Korean barbecue was his favourite,” reports Andrew Chung of the Toronto Star. Continue reading Body-parts murder: 10 new things we know

Universitas 21 releases first world ranking

Photo by Ian Barrett for Maclean's

Researchers have created what they say is the first ranking of countries from best to worst at providing higher education. The report is from Universitas 21, a network of research-intensive universities whose Canadian members are McGill and the University of British Columbia.

The ranking followed a detailed examination of 48 countries using 20 metrics, including both input and output measures (see below). Each nation’s score is a percentage of the winner’s score, which was automatically 100. Here are the top 20:

Continue reading Canada: third best for universities

Toronto, McGill and UBC in top 25

The University of Toronto

Three Canadian universities are among the top 25 schools worldwide in the newly-released 2012 Times Higher Education Reputation Rankings.

The University of Toronto ranks 16th. McGill University and the University of British Columbia are tied for 25th place. No other Canadian school is on the top 100 list.

Our universities’ reputations outshine those in most other countries, especially when our relatively smaller population is considered.

Among the top 25 (which includes two ties) fifteen are located in the United States, four are in the United Kingdom, two are in Japan, and there is one each in Singapore and Switzerland.

Harvard University, the  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Cambridge took the top three spots.

Students had been waiting in line for days

Capture from RavenIonosphere on Flickr

A woman died from head and chest injuries and three others are in critical condition after a stampede at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, reports The Telegraph.

The chaos can be viewed in this amateur footage.

It happened on Tuesday morning after hundreds of applicants and their families stormed a gate to try and get coveted spots in the university. Some had waited in line since Sunday morning. The university received 85,000 applications for 11,000 first-year spots. The seats available Tuesday were “overfill.”

South Africa has a youth unemployment rate of roughly 50 per cent, according to the OECD.

Closed for renovations or revenge?

Photo by Sunset Parkerpix on Flickr

Côte d’Ivoire, a West African nation, has had its two universities shut down by President Alassane Ouattara until at least September 2012, provoking condemnation by human rights organizations frustrated that students will lose even more time.

Côte d’Ivoire has experienced increased instability in recent years following a civil war from 2002 to 2004 and a 2010 election when former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after losing the vote. He was ousted with the aid of French and United Nations troops earlier this year and is now facing justice in the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The fighting caused many lost semesters at the country’s two universities.

Now, Ouattara’s government will close both the Cocody and Abobo-Adjamé universities again, ostensibly to renovate the buildings and reorganize the higher education system to meet international standards. But some Ivorians believe the closure is punishment for students and professors who supported Gbagbo. You can read more at University World News.