Swiss Universities Fear Losing Out On the EU Science Funding

We’ve highlighted below some of the most recent developments and occurrences in youth-related news and events. In this week’s Friday news we speak about increased number of foreign students who choose to go to Japan’s small cities, Swiss universities’ fear over EU funding and potential science cooperation between Macedonia and Greece.

Increased number of foreign students in Japan’s small cities

Nikkei reports that for the first time, study-abroad students made up more than 5 per cent of those enrolled in Japanese higher-education institutions in rural areas. In 2018, 73,320 foreign students (5.4 per cent) were hosted by 39 prefectures outside of the hree major urban areas of Tokyo, Aichi and Osaka. This represents an increase of 0.5 per cent from the year before. The number of foreign students in Japan rises sharply from 2013. Miki Sugimura, a professor at Sophia University, said: “In nonmetropolitan areas, where the population has declined sharply, there is an increasing movement to turn to study-abroad students to secure needed human resources.”

Swiss universities fear losing out on the EU science funding

Switzerland could lose out on the “Horizon Europe” science research funding in case they fail to reach agreement with the EU, reports Swissinfo. Horizon Europe pot includes €100 billion for innovation and research and it will succeed Horizon 2020. Currently, Switzerland has third country status and Swiss university professors and heads of two Fedderal Institutes of Technology voiced their concerns. Although the EU stated that this will not affect the funding of Swiss research projects, Martin Vetterli (EPFL) and Joël Mesot (ETHZ) are not so sure about it.

Name change could pave the way for increased science cooperation

Scientists in both Macedonia and Greece welcomed the Prespa agreement and they hope that they will now be able to work together more closely, reports Nature. The longstanding dispute was also the stumbling stone in the field of higher education.The agreement regarding the name change could now lead to a more formal deal on scientific and technological cooperation between the two countries. Costas Fotakis, who is Greek research minister and laser physicist, says that ”biomedicine, agrobiology, energy and the environment are areas where the two nations could now share research infrastructure and exchange expertise.”

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