In other coronavirus-related news, the March sitting of the Toefl English-language-proficiency exam has been called off in China because of the outbreak, while the College Board announced that it had canceled the registrations of students who appear to be traveling from China to other countries to take the SAT. (The college-entrance exam is not offered in mainland China, except at a handful of international schools attended by foreign-passport holders.) Nafsa: Association of International Educators will hold a virtual town hall on coronavirus this Thursday. The disease’s potential impact on American higher education was a major focus of discussion at the AIEA conference — look for more coverage in the next issue of my global-education newsletter, latitude(s).
Ivy League Colleges Are Latest to Be Snared in Foreign-Funds Probe
Harvard and Yale Universities are the latest colleges caught up in a U.S. Department of Education investigation into gifts and contracts from foreign sources. In a pair of letters, the department suggested that the two Ivy League universities had failed to fully report all foreign funding, and it appeared to urge a thorough accounting of all programs, activities, and people supported by money, no matter how small, from overseas governments and donors. That request would seem to go beyond the provisions of federal law as understood by most colleges, which requires reporting of gifts and contracts above $250,000. “To satisfy these requests in full, you would have to hire teams of at least 10 additional staff members working full time for a year,” Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, told my colleagues Lindsay Ellis and Dan Bauman. “It is fair to ask if this is aimed at deterrence.” In September, the department sent letters to the University of Maryland at College Park and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on similar themes as the Harvard and Yale letters.
China Puts in Place New Rules for Ideological Education
Chinese universities are still closed because of the coronavirus, but the government announced new regulations for ideological education on university campuses. The new rules seem to centralize the teaching of “patriotic education,” requiring all syllabi to be developed from nationally approved materials and mandating that the administrators in charge of such educational activities be members of the Chinese Communist Party. For a good breakdown of the regulations, which take effect on March 1, check out this Twitter thread.
Putin Calls for Closure of ‘Dud’ Universities
President Vladimir Putin of Russia has ordered the closure of poor-performing universities. In a recent speech, he said, “We need to keep closing dud universities, of which there are still many.” Low-quality institutions should be closed or merged, so that the country can invest more in increasing educational quality and raising the global prestige of Russian universities. He also said that vocational and higher education should better serve the country’s economic needs, and that universities need to work more closely with government and business.
