Japan, Turkey, World: Education News

The TopUniversities.com guide to the latest higher education news from around the world, on 22 May 2013.

Japan: Falling yen having impact on Japanese students abroad

The depreciation of the Japanese yen is starting to have an impact on Japanese students at universities in other countries, the Global Post reports. The change in currency exchange rates means tuition fees at universities in countries like the US and UK have become more expensive for Japanese students. One Japanese student about to start studying at a UK grad school said she now expects her planned three years of study to cost at least 2 million yen more than she originally thought.

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Turkey: First Kurdish-speaking university planned

The first Kurdish-language university is expected to open for the 2015-16 academic year, in the Diyarbakır region of south-east Turkey, Bianet reports. Provisionally known as Mesopotamia University, the planned institution will teach courses in Turkish, Kurdish and English – aiming to also add courses in Assyrian and Armenian at a later point. Ramazan Tunç, general secretary of the Mesopotamia Foundation, which is leading the project, said: “The idea of a Kurdish speaking university came from an urgent need... Our goal is to create a multilingual educational institution.”

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China: Increased support for universities in less developed areas

The Chinese government has announced plans to increase support for universities in less developed parts of the country, Xinhua reports. This includes a pledge of 10 billion yuan (about US$1.6bn) to be invested in 100 universities in central and western regions between 2012 and 2015. Zhang Daliang, head of higher education at the Ministry of Education, said the relative weakness of universities in these areas, compared to wealthier coastal areas, has created a bottleneck for development.

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World: EdX online course platform adds 15 universities

EdX, the online course platform started by Harvard University and MIT, has added 15 more universities to its list of course providers, Bloomberg reports. New additions include Peking University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Kyoto University, Cornell University and the University of Washington, bringing EdX’s total to 27 universities. Rival MOOC platform Coursera now has more than 60 universities signed up, and recently announced a scheme to translate courses into Arabic.

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