Japanese society is undergoing transformative changes amidst a wave of IT growth and globalisation. Even the 'once-in-a-century' recession of two years ago seems merely a ripple in this massive swell. The world is fused together with a unifying economic system and the speed of change has accelerated dramatically.

In spite of the impact social scientists have had around the world, Gudmund Hernes says humans face crises that tax their understanding and their capacity to cope. The President of the International Social Science Council describes the influence of social science as a "mixed blessing" and says social scientists' foresight has been poor at key junctures in recent times.

Social scientists migrate from the main academic centres to the periphery to teach, export their skills or do research and gather data. In the opposite direction, talented young social scientists tend to leave a peripheral position to go to academic centres to be trained or work with the most eminent scholars, says Laurent Jeanpierre, a professor of political science at the University of Paris-8 Saint-Denis.

In his discussion of social sciences and the Asia-Pacific region in the World Social Science Report 2010, John Beaton says the main elements are employment, social mobility and equity, security and safety, education, population, health, globalisation, adaptation to climate change and the governance required to manage these matters.

The social sciences in the Arab region are shaped by severe socio-political, economic and environmental challenges, instability and by diverse and divergent research policies, agendas and funding programmes at the national and regional levels, say Seteney Shami and Moushira Elgeziri.

The social sciences in Sub-Saharan Africa are seriously under-resourced but determined, says Johann Mouton, Director of the Centre for Research on Science and Technology and head of the African Doctoral Academy at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

The all-round expansion that characterised African higher education in general, and the social sciences in particular, during the 1960s was interrupted at the end of the 1970s as African countries began to slide into a prolonged economic crisis, says Dr Adebayo Olukoshi, Director of the UN African Institute for Economic Development and Planning.

Kenya is a good illustration of the effect on scholarly output of lack of resources and capacity in higher education, say the editors of the World Social Science Report 2010, in a discussion of why Kenyan academics do not publish in international refereed journals.

The most distinctive feature of North American social science, besides its size, is the extent of the investment made in time, facilities, training and incentives for research since the Second World War, says Craig Calhoun, President of the US Social Science Research Council and a social sciences professor at New York University.

Universities are crucial actors in the evolution of the social sciences in Latin America, say Hebe Vessuri, head of the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research's Center on Science Studies, and Maria Sonsiré López who also works at the centre in Caracas.

The number of social science publications in international journals is much lower than those for the natural sciences and medicine. So the natural sciences and the medical fields dominate university rankings while the strength of universities' social sciences scarcely contributes to their position, says Anthony FJ van Raan, a professor of science studies and Director of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has cancelled an austerity measure that would have penalised parents who subsidise their student children's accommodation. He made the announcement after warnings from two leading organisations representing students' interests that students were facing sharp increases in costs both as they enrolled for the 2010-11 academic year and during the course of their studies.

As Pakistan's Election Commission began its first hearings into parliamentarians' fake degrees this week some feared the scandal had been pushed out of the limelight by the devastating floods. Nonetheless, the degree debacle is straining the credibility of the country''s higher education and election systems.

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.

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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Taiwanese students have strong academic training, while international students bring different learning experiences from their home countries. This has led to increasing measures and incentives to attract students from abroad. Indeed, internationalisation has been recognised as a key element for the development of higher education in Taiwan.

Too much attention has been on how to attract world-class universities to India. Not enough time and intellectual energy has been spent on how to serve the national interest through strategic partnerships with international institutions of higher education.

Dr Rajeev Shorey (pictured) is President of NIIT University, a not-for-profit institution in Rajasthan sponsored by NIIT Limited. He has worked variously for General Motors India, IBM, GM Research and as an academic at IIT Delhi and the National University of Singapore. Dr Rahul Choudaha* spoke with him for University World News.

Professor Lazarus Hangula, Vice-chancellor of the University of Namibia, has been described as an innovative administrator. Calm on the surface, he paddles energetically below. Moses Magadza interviewed Hangula for University World News, to try to find out what drives the man at the controls of Namibia's academic blast furnace.