Word: oecd
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Britain. Short of cash, and jostling colleges from America to China for the smartest students and staff, universities across the country are rethinking fund raising. The need is obvious: investment in British higher education stood at 1.1% of GDP in 2004, according to the most recent data from the OECD, while the U.S. spent 2.9%. From medieval Oxford and Cambridge to ambitious modern universities like Warwick, institutions are slowly sharpening their competitive edge. As worldwide college entry rates and numbers of students learning overseas soar, "no matter which way you look at it," says Heather Bell, appointed last year...
...amount of assistance going to poor countries to improve farming practices and build agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation systems and dams. Global assistance for agricultural development plummeted from about 18.7% of total foreign assistance in 1979 to 5.2% in 2006, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The West last year donated $1.2 billion to help Africa's 400 million small farmers. Adjusted for inflation, that is about the same amount donated annually more than 30 years ago, according to World Bank figures...
...also been inadequate. In 2002, African Union leaders vowed to spend 10% of their annual budgets on agricultural development; few of the 53 member nations have consistently met that target. "We have been warning of the dangers for a long time," says Simon Scott, head of statistics for the OECD, which has tracked how several African countries have gone from being food exporters in the 1980s to relying heavily on foreign food aid today. In short, the world is suddenly hungry because of decades of neglect. "It is as much a question of complacency as anything else," says Charles Riemenschneider...
...restore investor confidence, Icelandic banks and government officials have emphasized their economy's unflagging strengths in a charm offensive directed at ratings agencies and investors. Iceland is the fifth richest country in the oecd; the prices of its largest exports, aluminum and fish, are at record highs. "The Icelanders are richer than us," says British economist Portes. "They're not exactly going to starve." (Iceland's gross national income per capita is $39,400, compared to the U.K.'s $35,300.) What's more, the banks remain fundamentally sound: they have strong deposit ratios and are more profitable than their...
...larger National Union of Teachers (NUT) expressed concern over a rise in students taking weapons and drugs to school. But schools can be part of the problem. Ofsted, the official body that inspects educational institutions, says that 10% of state high schools are "inadequate." A 2007 report by the OECD found that class sizes in British high schools are among the largest of 30 Western countries. NUT members have resolved to launch a campaign to push for smaller classes amid reports that teachers are struggling to teach as many as 55 pupils at one time. Average class sizes...