President Nasheed says improving tertiary education essential for country’s future

President Mohamed Nasheed said special measures are needed to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for tertiary education by 40 percent over the next five years.

The GER shows the levels of enrolment for primary, secondary and tertiary education.

President Nasheed said to increase the GER for tertiary education, reforms in the school system were needed, as well as an increase in secondary education. He said three out of four students took the commerce stream, resulting in limited opportunities for employment and higher education.

President Nasheed said passing the Maldives National University Bill was of utmost importance, as well as transferring research work from government offices to the national university.

The president added that it is crucial to start medicine courses in the Maldives, as 340 doctors are needed to provide quality healthcare. He said the government would provide loans for higher education outside the country, including 50 student loans for nursing and medicine courses.

President Nasheed said starting degree courses in areas such as architecture, quantitative surveying and town planning also needed to be started.

He noted that capacity building in the judiciary was another important area.

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Australian architects design floating skyscrapers for the Maldives

Australian architects have proposed floating skyscrapers to be built in the Maldives in an attempt to combat rising sea levels.

The designs, named ‘Maldives Floating States’, were submitted as part of the 2010 Skyscraper Competition organised by eVolo architecture magazine. They made the finals but did not get into the top three.

Architects William Fong, Joshua Loke and Livee Tan proposed that, in case rising sea levels were to flood all of the Maldives, the entire population could be relocated onto 1,000 metre tall floating structures.

They believe this way, the people of the Maldives could continue to live in “its own waters” and not lose its culture and heritage.

They have called their designs “engineering marvels of buoyancy and height” with the proposed structures to be anchored to the sea floor more than 1,000 metres below the surface.

To accommodate growing population, they suggest the towers’ height can be increased or new towers can be built, “like reclamation, only floating.”

In early March, the government signed an agreement with Dutch Company Dutch Docklands to build a floating golf course and and hotel.

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