Учебно-методический комплекс по дисциплине «Профессиональный иностранный язык» (стр. 9 )

There are also different trends for studying overseas. In sub-Saharan Africa, the two most likely destinations are South Africa and France. North African students also go to France in large numbers. Also running against all the international trends is that in Africa women are less likely to go to university than men, by a considerable margin. In Chad, a country bigger than the UK, France and Germany put together, only 0.6% of women enrol in higher education.

Even the rise in student numbers is double edged. A report from the World Bank says the growth in enrolments is outstripping the financial capacity of universities to provide staff and facilities. It adds to the pressure on an underfunded system.

Funding switch

Thandika Mkandawire, professor of African Development at the London School of Economics, says African universities are still trying to recover from a loss of funding that began in the 1980s, when resources were switched to primary education. In the post-colonial eras of the 1960s and 1970s universities grew across Africa, he says. But that came to an abrupt halt. And while other parts of the world invested in higher education, African universities missed out on an entire cycle of growth."Once you destroy a university, it's very difficult to rebuild," he says. It might be difficult to play catch-up after so many "lost years", but Professor Mkandawire says that a new middle class in Africa is putting the demand for better universities back on the political agenda.

There is also a growing recognition that universities are part of building a modern economy."Universities are places of upward social mobility," says Jo Beall, deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, the only African university to appear in the global top 200.They are places where individuals and communities try to improve their life chances. "There is a huge appetite for learning," she says. But there is a "heartbreaking" uphill struggle for students wanting to go to university in some poorer parts of Africa.

Lack of resources

She describes visiting a central African university where the approach roads were lined by people operating photocopying machines, run on car batteries, copying 1950s text books for students. Students might have to travel three or four hours each day to get to university. Lecture halls are so overfilled that there are security guards and gates to control the rush.

Professor Beall, who is joining the British Council this summer, says she remains optimistic about the future of African higher education. There are universities working to become high-performing research institutions. But there will need to be changes - including greater recognition of the importance of academics and partnerships with international universities.

The weakness of Africa's universities is not only about a lack of money, says Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College in the US. He says there have been "multiple dysfunctions", not least of which have been political instability and corruption. African universities have missed out on many of the trends in recent decades which have boosted universities in other parts of the world.

Missing out

The lucrative market in overseas students has not brought students to Africa. Instead there has been a "brain drain" with Africa's scholars moving abroad. US and UK universities have invested in branch campuses in Asia and the Middle East rather than Africa. And Africa, with extremes of wealth and poverty, has lacked the type of expanding middle class that has helped to drive the growth in higher education in countries such as China and India. As well as financial investment, he says there need to be cultural changes, such as protecting academic freedom, to create the conditions in which universities can develop.

But there is no escaping the scale of the financial gap. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has set up a faith foundation which works with a network of universities around the world, including in the US and Africa. He points out that Yale is not just much wealthier than a university such as Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone - Yale's endowment is several times greater than the GDP of the entire country. Ruth Turner, chief executive of the foundation, says the scale of the gap is not just about economics - it needs to be considered in moral terms. "We all live in a globalised world. But we lack a vocabulary for an ethical way of looking at it. How do we ask is it a right thing to do?"

Economic development

In a global market, the odds can seem stacked in favour of the big players. It is the corner shop against the chain store. The top universities are "global institutions, they can attract the best staff, they have links with business, they extend beyond their location", said Keith Herrmann, who is working on a Commonwealth-supported project to make Uganda's universities more attractive to students in east and southern Africa. In contrast, he says that for many universities in Africa, without such links and leverage, the "benefits of globalization are elusive"."Universities are vital, fundamental to getting skilled individuals, it's crucial to economic development," he says, but many African universities are missing out on the upward cycle of more investment, more research and attracting more international students.

But there are signs of hope. "There is a change, it's becoming much more open, there is less repression," said Professor Mkandawire. He says there is recognition that switching investment away from universities had been a mistake, which was now being reversed."There are islands of good performance emerging," he said. But he warned that progress was going to take many years of hard work.

Section 3. Writing

“So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work”

Do you agree with this opinion? Why?/ Why not?

Write an essay of not more than 200 words.

Section 4. Speaking.

Discuss the importance of change management with your partner.

Section 5. Translation.

Translate the text into Russian.

Training your team

As a customer care trainer who works with companies of all shapes and sizes, I’m well aware of the ‘extreme cautiousness’ with which most organizations are approaching any purchases – especially when it comes to training their employees to be and do their best. As I see it, there are three main challenges:

1) They have a small training budget – or perhaps no budget for training at all.

2) They’ve downsized, making it difficult for anyone to be away from their desks to attend training sessions for any length of time.

3) Even if they’ve bounced back from tough times, they don’t completely trust that the market will bounce back. As one of my prospective clients put it, “I have to check with my boss when I want to purchase a pencil.”

Meanwhile, employees suffer from the stress of the worry and of the extra workloads they carry. That stress affects their relationships with each other and, of course, the experience they provide to their customers. And we all know how negative experiences can erode the bottom line.

Test 3.

Section 1. Listening.

Task 1. Listen to an interview with a famous economist. Use the information from the interview to complete the gaps in the sentences below. Use NOT MORE THAN THREE words.

Tape script.

Interviewer: Your book discusses the shaper and adapter models. How should strategists think about shaping and adapting in these times?

Economist: That depends on how prepared or fortunate you were going into this downturn. No one player can shape the fundamental uncertainties that are driving global capital markets. Interdependent players all over the world are making decisions. No one player—not even a Warren Buffett—can say, “You know, I feel great about things,” and change the dynamics all that much. So in some sense, everyone has to adapt to that macro uncertainty.

When it comes to fundamental strategic decisions, the paradox is that for a lot of companies in the most uncertain environments, there’s actually very little uncertainty about what they’re going to do. The situation is very clear because of the condition of their balance sheets. They really have to hunker down. They just don’t have the degrees of freedom to think about fundamental changes in their strategy.

On the other hand, there are the fortunate few that have very healthy balance sheets, aren’t so dependent on financing today, and don’t hold a lot of bad assets. They have a real interest in shaping opportunities. Again, they cannot shape the macro environment; they must adapt to that. However, they can fundamentally reshape their industry landscapes with bold M&A plays, R&D that others can’t finance, and entry into new markets. They can make bold moves that may shape the way their markets and industries play out for many years to come by fundamentally changing the competitive dynamics or product positioning. They do have degrees of freedom and thus the opportunity to be successful shapers.

Interviewer: Who are these fortunate few?

Economist: They tend to be companies with business models that generate a lot of cash and don’t have much debt. That would include a lot of high-tech companies and service businesses in general, which tend to scale up through people rather than through $100 million plants. Similarly, some businesses in the energy, utilities, and telecom sectors rely on fully depreciated assets generating a lot of operating cash. So the fortunate companies are in sectors that have real cash cow businesses, even if these companies can’t completely escape the profitability and growth challenges that will be difficult for any company to avoid in the near future.

1.  The speaker mentions … as a person of influence among the players of the global financial market.

2. The speaker thinks that many companies face a paradoxical situation when they do not have enough … to make any fundamental changes in their strategy despite the uncertainty of the market environment.