Illustrating just how severe the faculty shortage is in India, the country's minister in charge of higher education told Parliament on Wednesday that federally financed institutions, on average, face faculty shortages of 25 percent, the Press Trust of India, a news agency, reported. The minister, Kapil Sibal, said India's top science, architecture, management, and technology institutions had shortages ranging from 17 to 56 percent.

In a bid to improve the deteriorating quality of faculty members, India's chief higher-education regulator, the University Grants Commission, said last week that professors' promotions would now be based on their familiarity with and use of up-to-date, innovative teaching materials and methods, and the time they spend on tutorials and seminars, The Times of India reported. The commission has set up an elaborate points system covering those and other functions, adding to tough new rules for promotions and pay increases. One reason the universities continue to fall short in teaching and research is the poor English of its faculty members, according to a new study described by the BBC. The study, by the British Council, says that even though India's emergence as a major technology hub has in part been made possible by its English-educated workers, a "huge shortage" of teachers and quality...

The Australian government will exempt foreign students affected by the closure of 12 private higher-education institutions this year from paying a student-visa application charge of 540 Australian dollars, or about $500 U.S., as many must obtain new visas to complete their studies at another college, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. About 4,700 students have been left in the lurch by the college closings, the latest in a series of troubles for foreign students in Australia.

Four private vocational colleges in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, abruptly closed last week, leaving some 2,700 students in the lurch weeks before they were to have completed their programs, according to reports by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Associated Press. Some of the students, who are mostly from India and Southeast Asia, had recently paid thousands of dollars for courses next semester. The company that owns the colleges began bankruptcy proceedings on Thursday, dealing a major blow to government efforts to rebuild the battered image of Australia's vocational-education industry.

Worried about India's low research output, the government has doubled the salaries and annual contingency grants of research professors in public universities, according to the country's Press Information Bureau. The government agency says inflation and the devaluation of the Indian rupee are behind the decision, but officials have long been concerned about India's declining research activity.

A little more than a week after suicide attacks on a major Pakistani university left at least eight people dead, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Thursday that the United States would contribute $45-million to Pakistan's Higher Education Commission, a U.S. government press statement said. The contribution is part of a $1-billion pledge made by the United States at April's Tokyo Donors' Conference. The money will be used to expand relationships between Pakistani and American universities by increasing academic exchanges, and to increase university and technical education for students who have been affected by the fighting in the country, among other things.

Even as an eighth person, a master's-degree student, died on Tuesday of injuries suffered in the suicide-bomb attacks on Islamabad International University last week, the police commissioner of Rawalpindi, a nearby city in Pakistan, told educational institutions to make strict security arrangements or risk being forcibly closed, The News and the Daily Times reported. The official said the government could not afford to make such arrangements itself for the universities, which reopened on Monday after being closed since October 20.

Following Tuesday's deadly suicide-bomb attacks on International Islamic University, which killed five people and wounded 29, the nearly 600 Chinese students at the university are uncertain about whether they will stay on, reported the CCTV Web site. The students make up the largest group of foreign students on any Pakistani university campus; the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad is arranging for air tickets for the students interested in returning to China.

The strong Australian dollar and a decline of students from India will lead to a 10-percent drop in the number of foreign university students in Australia later next year, according to a report by Hobsons Asia-Pacific described in The Australian, a newspaper. "If the drop in inquiries during the last quarter continues, then the drop in enrollments in second semester for 2010 could be double-digit," said David Harrington, managing director of Hobsons Asia-Pacific, which represents 14 universities. Meanwhile, the report said, demand continues for an Australian university education, especially from China, another key market in addition to India. Inquiries from China are up 15 percent, it said.