Mentice, Inc. and Education Management Solutions, Inc. Form OEM Partnership

EVANSTON, Ill. and Exton, Pa., Oct 12, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Mentice, Inc., a leading developer and supplier of virtual reality (VR) based medical simulation systems and Education Management Solutions, Inc. (EMS), a leader in clinical skills training and evaluation software solutions, today announced at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics symposium in Washington D.C., an OEM partnership that enables Mentice to market MenticeSIM(TM) as a standard option to its flagship Vascular Intervention Simulation Trainer (VIST(TM)). Mentice selected EMS' technology as its video capture, skills evaluation, and debriefing software solution because of its robust functionality, ease of use and EMS' dominant market presence.

Interventional expertise is a result of optimal decision making combined with accomplished equipment handling skills. MenticeSIM(TM) digitally documents the technical components and the cognitive decisions throughout each simulated procedure so that a learner's ability can be assessed. Its archiving capability provides a continuum of the learner's advancement in skill and knowledge. The education and efficiency derived from this system drastically enhances the learner's experience while maximizing the evaluator's time and effort.

MenticeSIM(TM) is a digital recording, data collection, and assessment solution designed for improving simulation training. It captures the VR event, the event log file, and the Fluoroscopic images in real-time and provides evaluators the ability to assess and score trainee performance via checklists based on curriculum objectives. Remote access via multiple channels is available to deliver an efficient methodology for reviewing and assessing each VR experience.

"We are excited to partner with EMS and bundle its technology with the Mentice VIST(TM)," said Tim Shannon, VP of Sales and Marketing, Americas. "While the simulator facilitates the training of basic and complex interventional techniques, MenticeSIM(TM) provides the added benefits of both technical and cognitive assessment capabilities. This partnership further highlights both Mentice's desire to enhance its educational offering to its customers and its dedicated focus on the endovascular simulation market."

The Mentice VIST(TM) combined with MenticeSIM(TM) is a powerful teaching and educational solution. It enables objective measurement of skills which makes it possible for academic institutions, community hospital groups, and industry customers to establish benchmarks, maintain quality standards, monitor competencies and conduct valuable research over time. The ultimate goal is to enhance the safety and outcome of a human patient's experience.

"We are very pleased about the partnership with Mentice as it provides global opportunities for EMS in the virtual reality market," said Anurag Singh, CEO of Education Management Solutions. "Both Mentice and EMS have a common goal of promoting patient safety and we believe that the integration of MenticeSIM(TM) with the Mentice VIST(TM) will further help in that endeavor.

Education gains stall for latest generation

Since World War II, if not before, it has been assumed that children were more likely to graduate from college than their parents. Now, those generational gains appear to have stalled.

About 35 percent of adults age 25 to 29 in 2006 had earned a college degree -- essentially the same number of adults 30 and older, the American Council on Education has found in a new report. Among Hispanics and American Indians, younger adults are less likely to have a two- or four-year college degree than previous generations.

The percentage of younger adults with a bachelor's degree was 26.9 percent in 2006, sharply lower than 29.3 percent in 2003. Forty percent of 18-24-year-olds were enrolled in college.

"It appears we are at a tipping point in our nation’s history," said ACE President Molly Corbett Broad. "One of the core tenets of the American dream is the hope that younger generations, who’ve had greater opportunities for educational advancement than their parents and grandparents, will be better off than the generations before them, yet this report shows that aspiration is at serious risk."

In 2006, 18 percent of adult Hispanics had at least an associate degree, compared with 16 percent of younger Hispanics. Among American Indians, the figures were 21 percent and 18 percent, respectively.

The educational attainment rates of African-Americans remained steady at 24 percent.

Whites and Asian-Americans continued to graduate from college in higher numbers. Among Asian-Americans, 66 percent of young adults had earned a degree, compared with 54 percent of older adults. Among whites, the percentages were 41 percent among today's students, and 37 for the older generations.

Yet total minority enrollment at the nation's colleges and universities between 1995-2005 rose by 50 percent, from 3.4 million to 5 million. White enrollment increased 8 percent.

Women continue to outpace men. Among those age 18 to 24, 36 percent of men were enrolled in college in 2006 compared with 44 percent of young women. Women earn 57 percent of all bachelor's degrees awarded.

About 85 percent of the US population graduates from high sc

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hool, a figure that has remained more or less steady over the past two decades.

Education in india

Lecturers' accused them of a "fat-cat mentality" when The Times Higher Education Supplement revealed that vice-chancellors' pay went up by 6.3 per cent and pay for lecturers and researchers rose by 3 per cent.

The highest paid vice-chancellor is John Quelch, dean of the London Business School, who earned £266,000 after a rise of 5.6 per cent. Michael Wright, the vice-chancellor of Aston University was the second highest. His pay rise of 10.3 per cent took his salary to £161,000.

Arthur Lucas, principal of King's College London, earns £158,000 after a rise of 15.3 per cent. Lord Oxburgh, who retired last month as rector of Imperial College, London, received a 27.1 per cent increase, taking his salary to £136,000. Dai John, the vice-chancellor of Luton, had a pay rise of 24.1 per cent to £130,000.

David Triesman, general secretary of the Association of University Teachers, said: "These figures reveal a shameless attempt by vice-chancellors to reward themselves for the hard work and effort of their staff. This fat-cat mentality smacks of hypocrisy of the highest order." Tom Wilson, head of the universities department at thelecturers' union, Natfhe, said:"It is never clear what criteria are used for deciding vicechancellors' salaries. Universities' remuneration committees are supposed to review their performance but against what? Student numbers? Progress on equal opportunities? Industrial relations?

"The salaries don't seem to bear any relation to the size of the job. Last year we wrote to universities asking for details of the basis of their decisions but got nowhere."

A spokesman for the London Business School said: "We are operating in an international environment. We have to pay according to the rates that the market demands. It is as simple as that."

Of 163 heads of institutions, only 18 accepted pay rises of 3 per cent or less and a further 10 accepted a pay cut, usually compared with their predecessors' salaries. The rest had rises greater than those they imposed on their staff.

CAT

Student Dean Hofstee, 19, was killed and Clancy Coker, 20, seriously injured when the car allegedly hit them outside their inner Melbourne Southbank hotel early on Wednesday.

The Gold Coast students were in the city for the annual Australian University Games.

Puneet, 19, an Indian hospitality student in Australia on an education visa, said factors other than alcohol and speed were to blame for the crash.

"My eyes were sore and they were closed and when they opened a cat came on to the road and I lost control," Puneet said.

Puneet, of Newport, has been charged with culpable driving and was granted bail after appearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

He is due to appear in court again in January.

An investigation by police indicated he was travelling at more than 150km/h in a 60km/h zone and had a blood-alcohol level of .165 - more than three times the legal limit.

Learner drivers must have no alcohol in their blood.

"I don't think I was going at 150km/h," Puneet said.

"If it had been that fast, the balloons (air bags) would have come out. I didn't see them (Mr Hofstee and Mr Coker) coming out after I crashed into the pole."

The two friends were about to enter the Mantra Hotel at about 1am when the car, which had allegedly skidded for 100m, mounted the footpath and struck them.

Puneet said that in the hours before the crash he had been drinking at a restaurant in Nunawading with colleagues from Telstra - where he works part time as a sales representative.

"I was drinking scotch. I had four scotch and Cokes at the restaurant," he said.

"I was coming back from a party at Nunawading with my team leader from Telstra."

Mr Hofstee, from Burleigh Heads, died at the scene.

His Griffith University mate, Mr Coker, from Mermaid Beach, is recovering in the Alfred hospital with head injuries and suspected fractures to his leg and pelvis.

Peter and Fran Hofstee paid tribute to their son, describing him as loving, talented and larger than life.

"As much as Dean loved you, you loved him. He loved life," they said. "Dean was larger than life and lived and loved it to the full."

Puneet said he was too ashamed to tell his family in India about "the worst day of my life".

He is not allowed to drive while on bail, must report to police five times a week and cannot leave the country.

Irish education must spread its wings beyond these shores

WHEN WINSTON Churchill wrote his book While England Slept , he was keen to draw attention to what he saw as Britain's failure to anticipate the challenge of Germany's rising power in the 1930s. Although Ireland faces an infinitely more benign international environment today, I fear future historians may pen While Ireland Slept , detailing how we missed out on the explosion in wealth and power occurring far beyond these shores.

In the emerging markets of east Asia and the Persian Gulf, we are witnessing an unprecedented surge in economic growth. While much has been written about the advances made by Chinese manufacturers or the financial institutions setting up shop in Dubai, there has been an equally strong expansion of the global market in education in emerging economies. It is an incredible opportunity for anybody involved in education, but I fear that Ireland - with a few notable exceptions - is not exploiting this opportunity as well as it could.

There is an immense market for English-language education across Asia, and particularly in China. Chinese universities may be producing thousands of engineering PhDs every year, but most commentators attest to the stultifying nature of education at all levels from primary school upwards, with students encouraged to absorb large amounts of information and regurgitate it.

While the West's education systems are not perfect, the more critical approach that is characteristic of western - and particularly English-language - educational systems, is a powerful selling point in the Asian market.

This gap in the market has not gone unnoticed by major universities around the world. Johns Hopkins University set up an institutional link with the university of Nanjing more than 20 years ago. But this model of partnering with foreign universities has now been superseded as universities create fully fledged campuses abroad. The University of Nottingham has opened a campus in Malaysia and one in Ningbo, a town outside Shanghai. By the start of the upcoming academic year, the Ningbo campus will have more than 3,000 full-time students. The University of Liverpool, together with a local Chinese university, also has a campus in Suzhou, another town in the booming hinterland of Shanghai.

Secondary-level schools have also been active in Asia. The British have been particularly strong there, leveraging the strength of the public school brand. Dulwich College, a secondary school in London, has branches in Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing. Harrow, a London grammar school, has campuses in Beijing and Bangkok.

The other main centre of educational expansion has been the United Arab Emirates and Persian Gulf. In Doha, the capital of Qatar, there are branch campuses of a number of US universities, including Cornell, Georgetown, Texas A&M and Carnegie Mellon. In Abu Dhabi, there are plans for a New York University campus that will admit its first students in 2010.

Even France, whose public university system is under considerable strain, has managed to expand. The legendary Sorbonne, whose reputation abroad is somewhat better than it is in France, has set up a campus in Abu Dhabi.

Education In India

HAMBURG, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Education experts and officials from China and Germany gathered here on Thursday to mull over ways of furthering bilateral education cooperation.

The one-day 3rd Sino-German education forum, focusing on professional education cooperation, was jointly hosted by the Confucius Institute of Hamburg and Germany's KWB company.

Monika Auweter-Kurtz, chancellor of Hamburg University, said atthe forum's opening ceremony that Chinese students and researchersstudying in Germany have made great contributions to German education.

Hamburg University, which has more than 200 overseas Chinese students and scholars, has attached great importance to cooperation with Chinese higher-learning institutes and hoped to expand academic and personnel exchanges, the chancellor said.

Education Counselor of Chinese embassy Jiang Feng described the Sino-German education cooperation as "multi-level and comprehensive."

Also speaking at the opening ceremony, Jiang said that nearly 37,000 Chinese students are currently studying in German colleges and universities, while more than 3,000 German students are studying in China.

The statistics testified the two countries' close relationship in the field of education, Jiang added.

About 80 education experts from two countries attended the forum and held discussions on how to enhance bilateral exchanges on compulsory education, professional training and higher education.

CAT Test Patterns

THE NORTHERN Ireland Executive is acting unfairly towards children, parents and teachers by failing to find agreement on education reform, a leading educationalist has claimed.

Prof Tony Gallagher said Sinn Féin and the DUP, which have stridently opposing views on the manner in which primary children transfer to second-level schools, should find some way of agreeing workable reforms.

Minister for Education Caitríona Ruane has already announced the abolition of the controversial 11-plus transfer test and insisted yesterday the way ahead is clear. She told the Assembly: "People right across the North understand exactly what's happening here.

"There's a small minority of people who are trying to block change. I'm moving forward with a range of proposals, broadening the curriculum, dealing with the 12,000 young people that we're failing every year." She vowed not to "preside over education apartheid".

However Prof Gallagher of Queen's University, and a key policy adviser to the Burns group on post-primary reform, said of her plan: "It's quite clear that she's not going to get it past the Executive." The main Executive parties had the power to veto each other, he added, and this was the central problem. "Partnership government should be about saying 'this is what we would like, so let's talk about what we can agree to put in place'. That's what they should be doing and they're not. They are sitting with their fixed positions shouting at one another."

Asked was he clear about what was going to happen beyond the proposed abolition of the 11-plus test,

A Databook of US Education Computer Hardware Expenditures By Education Level, 2007-2012

This Excel-based Data-rich Deliverable (DRD) that is part of the Education subscription includes market intelligence on IT: Computer Hardware expenditures for the education vertical by level. The report defines computer hardware as computing equipment, such as servers, PCs, laptops, storage solutions and peripherals.

Education includes both the K-12 segment and the higher education segment. The education industry can be defined as a public or private institution/school delivering and providing coursework instruction for students ranging from pre-school to post graduation. The education industry includes privately owned instructional institutions, as well as schools funded by federal, state, and local grants and monies. K-12 includes educational institutions and schools, both private and public, for grades Kindergarten through 12th grade includes grade school, junior high or middle school and high school. Higher education includes educational institutions and schools, both private and public, for post-secondary education; as well as junior college, undergraduate education, and post graduate education at colleges and universities.

The Expert Guide for this deliverable is Stephanie Atkinson. Forecasts are from 2007 through 2012 and include annual growth rates, as well as percentage of total market.

Sources: Our segment and market forecasts, which include business expenditures, market demographics, and usage and adoption statistics, are built using multiple sources, including our proprietary research.

These sources include, but are not limited to:

- Secondary research

- Government data and statistics (e.g. department of commerce, federal communication commission, bureau of labour statistics and us census bureau

- Primary research

- Vendor-based research

- In-depth interviews with key decision-makers (where relevant)

We select data sources to provide greatest degree of perspective on each market or segment, in addition to the highest level of data accuracy, stability, and consistency over time.

Please Note: Due to the brevity and/or nature of the content posted, there is no table of contents available for this report.