To many academics and students in Egypt, Minister of Higher Education Hani Hilal is the minister of controversy. Months ago, citing security concerns, he banned female students wearing the niqab (full-face veil) from staying in low-cost dormitories or sitting exams. He triggered another uproar when he decided not to build new law schools, saying that the country already had sufficient. His latest controversial decision is to ban the use of textbooks.

South Africa's inability to produce enough doctoral graduates to build the 'knowledge economy' it aspires to, or simply to replace the existing cohort of academics in the higher education system, is a challenge widely acknowledged by government departments, their agencies and universities. But fixing the problem is a lot harder.

A body formed to help curb ethnicity and boost cohesion in Kenya in the wake of a 2008 post-election crisis wants top administrators in public universities moved over tribalism. It claimed that most vice-chancellors had been appointed along tribal lines or on the basis of dominant ethnic affinities in the regions where universities were located, rather than on merit.

Academics at Nigerian universities have once again condemned the use of public funds for Nigerian lawmakers to attend university seminars in the US. This comes after a seminar offered by Kansas University to Nigerian legislators became embroiled in charges of financial irregularity involving the university, a Nigerian-born staff member and top Nigerian presidential officials.

In recent updates to parliament, lawmakers heard of plans to strengthen mathematics and science education, that construction work on Zambia's most prestigious university had remained unfinished for 45 years, and that government was funding collaborative research with a South African institute on testing traditional HIV-Aids medicines.

The University of Namibia has pulled together a multi-disciplinary team of scientists to conduct research into malaria, amid concerns over the growing global problem of drug-resistant malaria. The Malaria Research Project aims to make more malaria treatments available in the country and monitor emerging resistance to drugs.

Africa is a step closer to setting up its own space agency, with the approval of a planned feasibility study by the 53 member states of the African Union earlier this month. The African Space Agency, as it would be known, would be intended to help ensure the continent becomes an important player in the global space programme.

Ethiopia is radically expanding its higher education sector: from two federal universities to 22 in just over a decade and another 10 to open soon. Even so, the percentage of the available cohort that attends higher education is still low at about 3%, compared with a Sub-Saharan average in 2007 of 6%, according to Unesco. The huge expansion of student numbers is mainly in new regional universities and a vibrant private system.

North-South partnerships between educational institutions are viewed as an important way in which the human and institutional capacity of African universities can be improved. But building and maintaining successful partnerships that can work within and challenge the tenacious asymmetries of global power, resources and capabilities often require sensitive planning and attention to detail.

The Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa, CARTA, aims to foster multidisciplinary research capacity in population and public health by teaming African universities, African research institutes and northern partners. One of the latest universities to join the consortium is the National University of Rwanda, where CARTA was officially launched on 31 March this year.

New students from areas of Algeria's interior have been enrolling for German and other subjects they have never learnt at school because they want to attend university in Algiers, according to La Tribune .

The commission in Cameroon responsible for assessing higher education qualifications issued abroad has exposed more than 300 cases of fraudulent diplomas, reported QuotidienMutations.info of Yaoundé.

Public spending on universities should be maintained where possible as countries seek a road out of the consequences of the global financial crisis, Richard Yelland, head of the OECD's Education Management and Infrastructure Division, told University World News this week. He said the crisis did not change universities' responsibility to use resources efficiently - but "makes it more urgent".
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Saudi Arabia has announced plans to continue the rapid expansion of higher education as part of its ninth five-year development plan, for 2010-14. A nearly quarter billion dollar annual investment in science and technology research will help strengthen the country's growing international position in innovation capacity.

The President of Ben-Gurion University of Negev has pledged to ignore threats by a right-wing political group to incite a boycott by international and other donors if staff and curriculum changes are not made. "We should never surrender to these pressures," said Professor Rivka Carmi.

After censoring the news media and internet in the wake of the May crackdown, the Thai government has turned its sights on campus plays for signs of political dissent. Seemingly innocuous and entertaining amateur dramatics by students have come under scrutiny by the nervous authorities, who fear they may contain seditious ideas or affect national security.

India's much-touted education loan guarantee scheme seems to have failed in the first year of implementation. Flooded by complaints from students and yet to receive claims from banks, a worried education ministry has asked the finance ministry to intervene, government sources said.

The first higher education institution for Peru's indigenous population, the Aymara, will soon become a reality. In May the Peruvian national congress' Education Commission approved a proposal to create a national Aymara university and in a vote to take place this month the country's ruling congress is expected to follow suit. In neighbouring Bolivia, President Evo Morales said this month that he intended to expand higher education for indigenous people.

As A-level exam results were announced last Thursday, it was predicted that some 200,000 young people might fail to get into a UK university out of the record number of 660,000 who applied this year. UCAS, the university and college admissions service, calculated that 44% failed to get the grades they needed, but 380,000 had achieved their desired places.

Although Britain this month ended a six-month suspension of issuing student visas in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, it has tightened student visa rules to include new language requirements. Many overseas students say this is too restrictive and could lead to genuine students opting to go elsewhere for their studies.

Germany has started a new programme to attract more excellent postgraduates from abroad. IPID - International promovieren in Deutschland - is designed to enhance the image of German doctoral training and develop new programmes with foreign partner universities.

Lund University has unilaterally decided to change its admission procedures for this academic year and has resorted to manual selection among foreign students who were deprived of a place by unwanted side-effects of the new procedures. Its decision follows widespread criticism of the new Swedish student selection system reported by University World News last week.

International study has been one of the global phenomena of the current millennium. The numbers going abroad to university have jumped from fewer than two million in 2000 to more than three million this year. Until now, most of the traffic has been from Asia to Western universities, but there may be a new direction of travel this year, as students squeezed out of British and American universities look overseas in much larger numbers.

In recent years, something like a small-scale industry has developed with commentators earnestly trying to read long-term trends into the rise and fall of various universities in the former THE-QS rankings. Such efforts have been largely futile.

More than two decades ago, the Australian government decided that international higher education should become an industry; since then it has become a major income producer for the nation. The higher education sector was motivated to make money from international education by government budget cuts, with revenue to be made up largely by entrepreneurial international activity.

Universities are at the sharp end of the global financial crisis, often facing draconian budget cuts and demands from governments to provide the workforce that will drive the route out of recession. Next month the OECD's programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education holds its general conference in Paris, titled Higher Education in a World Changed Utterly: Doing more with less. Here, the OECD's Richard Yelland discusses the thinking behind the conference and the issues likely to frame the discussions.

US scientists working in Australia may have found the oldest fossils of animal bodies, which predate other evidence of animal body forms by more than 70 million years.

At last, the news tipplers around the world have been waiting for - moderate drinking has been associated with good test scores. But the rider is that moderate drinking is probably an indicator of other good lifestyle habits that help people's brains perform well.

After considering the results of 10 different genetic models, Polish and US researchers say the maternal ancestor of all living humans lived 200,000 years ago.

China spent 34.72 billion yuan (US$5.1 billion) on financial aid for college students last year, up 18.21% from the previous year, a Ministry of Education official has revealed, reports the official agency Xinhau. The aid included scholarships, stipends, loans and allowances, said Cui Bangyan, a senior ministry official in charge of financial aid for students.

India's Human Resource Development Ministry has set up a high-powered committee, under legal expert NR Madhava Menon to come with a comprehensive policy on the issue of autonomy for higher education institutions such as central universities and the elite institutes of technology and management, reports The Times of India.

Admissions offers by American graduate schools to international applicants increased by 3% from 2009 to 2010, reversing a 1% decline the previous year, according to a report released last week by the Council of Graduate Schools, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. Offers to Americans, meanwhile, fell by 1% in the last year, although that figure may not be final.

Rice University Press is being shut down next month, ending an experiment in an all-digital model of scholarly publishing, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. While university officials said they needed to make a difficult economic decision to end the operation, they acted against the recommendations of an outside review team that had urged Rice to bolster its support for the publishing operation.

There is a revolution brewing in Polish higher education as universities grapple with wrenching demographic changes as well as trying to figure out how to train students for advanced degrees while producing top-flight research - something they currently do very badly - writes Jan Cienski for Globalpost.

The Council for Higher Education last week presented a plan designed to reform Israeli higher education, write Lior Dattel and Moti Bassok for Haaretz. It calls for an additional NIS7.5 billion (US$2 billion) in state spending on higher education over the next six years, of which NIS1.35 billion will be added to the two-year state budget for 2011 and 2012.

India has launched the second phase of the pan-Africa e-network, adding 12 more countries to the New Delhi-aided long distance education and tele-medicine programme, reports India Edunews.

A university term paper checking system has been developed in China by its second largest computer producer, TsinghuaTongfang, to prevent plagiarism among college students, the Beijing-based China Youth Daily reported last week.

Connie Wang had two stipulations as she interviewed potential roommates ahead of the school year - they must understand that she is loud, and they must also love "Glee", the hit musical television show - writes Zosia Bielski for the Globe and Mail. "I'm extremely picky," says the 18-year-old double major in drama and psychology.