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Did you know the United Kingdom is one of the top destinations in the world for students to pursue higher education? Check out this interactive map by UNESCO Institute for Statistics to find out about student mobility on a global level.
Are you surprised by the findings? Tell us in the comments.
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An IFOP Survey (fr) published in 2010 reveals that in France, 30% of young people aged 15 to 24 do volunteer work. This is a good average when compared to the rest of Europe. But why be satisfied with 30% when all young French people have the wherewithal to contribute to the cause of their choice? What good is it for youth to be full of energy and bursting with ideas if others cannot benefit from it?
Heloise, Radia, Lea, and Julliette are students at Sciences Po Paris who looked for ways to encourage young people to get involved. How could they help others understand that everyone has an important part to play? That even if they are young, even if they do not yet have the right to vote, they still can make a difference?
And that’s how they came up with the idea to go on a trip.
We launched South Asia’s first regional report, ‘More and Better Jobs in South Asia’ in a series of events in Dhaka early last week.
Through events including a seminar with youth at the University of Dhaka, a formal report launch the next day, a TV interview with the South Asia Chief Economist, Kalpana Kochchar, and an op-ed in the leading English language newspaper, the report helped generate discussion on core economic challenges facing Bangladesh, as job creation are highly correlated with the challenges of faster growth.
Bangladesh, along with other South Asian countries, has seen steady job growth and a substantial decrease in poverty over the past three decades. The country has added nearly 1.2 million new jobs every year over the last ten years, and this has been accompanied by increasing real wages and declining poverty amongst all categories of workers. This performance will have to be improved in the future, owing to Bangladesh's early progress in its demographic transition. With substantial reductions in infant and child mortality following a significant decline in fertility rates, Bangladesh's working age population is growing more rapidly than its young and old dependents. In turn, this can be attributed to Bangladesh’s success in nurturing the desire for smaller families, through its reproductive health program as well as its emphasis on girls’ education.
Last December, I wanted to find out why so many children near my university in rural Nepal dropped out of school . I went to more than 30 homes. Parents gave several reasons, but the main one was that they believed work was more beneficial than education. You can read some of their comments in my blog post.
An unmistakable sense of achievement and enthusiasm emanated through the halls of the 7th South Asia Economics Student Meet held in Colombo, Sri Lanka last month. The theme of Economic Freedom and Poverty Reduction in South Asia brought together 192 of the top economics undergraduates from universities throughout the region to showcase their economic knowledge and talent.
Demonstrating superior knowledge, creativity, and critical thinking skills; the participants exchanged ingenious ideas in exploring creative solutions to regional economic challenges while making new friendships to pave the way for greater mutual learning as emerging leaders and future policy makers.
Students from universities in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka participated in the 3-day conference focusing on economic freedom. As Professor Bishwambher Pyakuryal from Tribhuvan University in Nepal noted, “countries with higher degrees of economic freedom also tend to have higher incomes and levels of development.”
At a candid discussion yesterday with African ministers of education and a range of education experts from the public and private sectors, one thing was very clear – that higher education was recognized by everyone in the room as being critical for Africa’s development in the 21st century. All participants—from the Gambia’s education minister, who pointed out that his country went without a university for 30 years after independence and was facing a severe resource gap, to his counterpart in Senegal who wanted to catch up with Tunisia on the number of students enrolled in universities—agreed that higher education was key to diversifying Africa’s growing economies and reducing their dependence on natural resource extraction.
There’s another reason higher education is so important in Africa—the region has burgeoning numbers of young people, some 7 to 10 million of whom knock on the doors of the labor market every year. These young people constitute a huge opportunity for Africa. Yet of today’s unemployed in the region, a full 60 percent are youth. Good quality, relevant education that goes well beyond the primary stage will turn out the types of employable graduates and professionals that Africa so urgently needs. Doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers, and entrepreneurs—but also agriculturists and environmentalists. This morning’s news about intensifying drought in West Africa’s Sahel region, with 10 million people thought to be short of food, only underscores the great urgency to build human resource bases in each country that can help tackle the environmental and health issues that confront Africa.
What’s the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of India? If you type the inquiry into Google now, a graph will immediately display the data ranging from 1960 to 2008 and a figure showing that it is currently $1.22 trillion. If you click on the graph, it will immediately expand and allow you to compare historical figures as well as with that of other countries. I noticed, for instance, that India had a GDP of $36.6 billion in 1960; a 33 fold increase over the last 48 years!
The popular search engine has joined forces with the World Bank in sharing development data through the Data Finder, featuring 17 development indicators based on information provided by the World Bank to make the easy to understand information accessible to a broader audience. The public data tool is exceptionally easy to use and is excellent for comparative research or exploration of data over time. The indicators are as diverse as carbon dioxide emissions, fertility rates, GDP growth, and number of internet users.
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| Conflict affected young girl in a resettled village supported by the NEIAP project, Vavuniya, Sri Lanka |
So Australia is huffed that they have fallen behind South Africa and Sri Lanka, not in cricket ICC rankings but in the annual Global Gender Gap Index released a month or so ago. How ignominious to fall behind their cricketing rival, Sri Lanka, who in terms of development is a minion—far behind Australia.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions wailed “Australian employers must do more to encourage women’s participation in the workforce and close the gender pay gap.“
The Global Gender Gap report hardly made any waves here. This year, Sri Lanka has slipped 4 places to 16th place. However, the report says Lanka’s overall performance in 2008 has improved relative to 2007. “Sri Lanka continues to hold a privileged position of having the best performance in the region regarding political empowerment,” said the report. Sri Lanka was ahead of Spain (17), France (18), Australia (20) and U.S.A. (31).
So are we Sri Lankan women more prosperous and hold more equal position at the workplace than the Sheila’s in Oz?
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| There were perhaps too many children to a class, but these were clearly participatory. |
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| It's been a very enriching experience to listen to the reactions of these 1200 or so college students. |
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| Talking to some of the students, many of which are preparing for the college entrance examination. |
