The TopUniversities.com guide to the latest higher education news from around the world, on 1 May 2013.
US: 16-year old graduate to start PhD at Harvard
Later this year, Natasha Goss will be starting a PhD in atmospheric chemistry at Harvard University. So far, so normal – or at least as normal as starting a doctoral program at one of the world’s best universities (3rd in the 2012/13 QS World University Rankings) can be considered. However, Natasha, who is graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder, is only 16 years old. She started her degree in chemistry, with a minor in mathematics, when she was only 13 years – perhaps not surprising for someone who was reading by the age of 2 who went on to enroll at high school by the time she was 9! Natasha will funded by a National Science Foundation fellowship for three years, reports the Daily Camera.
Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong confessions page goes viral
A Facebook page on which University of Hong Kong (HKU) students confess their secrets has gone viral, gaining over 19,000 ‘likes’ in just two weeks from people curious to read the hundreds of confessions made on the social networking site. While initially the secrets were of the more lighthearted sort we would expect from university students, reports the South China Morning Post, the site quickly became an outlet for students to vent their frustrations, with tensions between local, Chinese and international students in particular annoying a great deal of users. Similar pages have been set up at other universities in Hong Kong, such as HKUST and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Global: “Boring university lecture” under threat from online courses, predicts Wikipedia founder
Jimmy Wales, founder of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has warned that unless universities adapt, online learning will come to take the place of the “boring university lecture”. He qualified his comments by saying that he didn’t believe that people could just go online and teach themselves, but that universities needed to incorporate elements of online learning into their teaching models. He cited an example of his university career, in which he chose to watch old tapes of lectures rather than sit through those of a renowned researcher which he found extremely boring. He reflected that he thought the change of pace in this area has been slow, reports the BBC.
US: Class of ’13 to enjoy higher starting salaries than class of ‘12
Students graduating from US universities this year are set to earn average starting salaries of US$44,928 – 5.3% higher on average than those graduating a year ago, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Petroleum engineers enjoy the highest starting salaries, at US$93,500, followed by computer scientists and chemical engineers, reports United Press International. You may note that these are all engineering-related fields; in fact, a total of six of the top 10 fields of employment were tied to engineering disciplines. So, you know what you should be studying if you’re interested in making a lot of money…
Read more about lucrative degree subjects >
UK: Application figures fail to recover
There is mixed news for UK universities this week, as UCAS (the centralized admissions body for UK undergraduate degrees) figures reveal that applications for undergraduate degrees at UK universities have gone up by 2.5% as compared to last year. This, however, remains nearly 4% lower than in 2010 – the last year before maximum tuition fees were raised to £9,000 (around US$14,000 today) from around a third of that. Applications from students from within the EU are also down by 2.9% compared to 2010, reports the Guardian, though applications from students outside the EU have gone up by 5.5% compared to last year.