A Korea-born American who heads Pyongyang's only private university is trying to teach students in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea about market economies, writes Park Ju-Min for China Daily.
EAST AFRICA
The declining quality of education in East Africa should not solely be blamed on universities, a seasoned academic has cautioned, writes Zephania Ubwani for The Citizen.
UNITED STATES
After a two-year investigation of the for-profit higher education industry, US Senator Tom Harkin last Monday unveiled an exhaustive report on the colleges' business practices, highlighting institutions that charge excessively high tuition fees and short-change academic investments in order to maximise revenues, writes Chris Kirkham for the Huffington Post.
UKRAINE
Ukrainian higher education is on the verge of major changes, with the long-awaited adoption of a new law on higher education scheduled for the end of this year, writes Eugene Gerden for the Royal Society of Chemistry.
BULGARIA
After Turkey suspended its recognition of Bulgaria’s university diplomas, Bulgarian Education Minister Sergey Ignatov reacted last Monday by announcing that the problematic diplomas were forged by Turkish citizens, reports Sofia News Agency.
EUROPE
Rising numbers of students from crisis-hit European countries are flocking to British universities to flee economic chaos at home, with figures suggesting that demand for courses abroad has soared by more than 150% among students from Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, writes Graeme Paton for The Telegraph.
UNITED KINGDOM
More than 100 students who had planned to go to UK universities under Brazil's Science Without Borders scheme have gone to the US after failing to meet language requirements set by the UK Border Agency, writes Elizabeth Gibney for Times Higher Education.
CANADA
Canada's institutions must stop charging foreign students higher tuition fees than Canadians pay, a government report said recently, in a bid to attract more of the foreigners who have boosted the economy, writes Muhammad Iqbal for Business Recorder.
CANADA
Canada’s federal government wants to strengthen rules surrounding student visas to crack down on fraud and human smuggling – even though it is not clear just how big a problem this is, writes Tobi Cohen for Postmedia News.
CANADA
Vancouver police and the Chinese consulate in Vancouver have launched a new safety initiative aimed at Chinese international students, writes Cheryl Chan for The Province. The initiative includes a Mandarin-language video outlining police and consular resources posted to their websites.
CANADA
Probably no one – except perhaps party leaders themselves – has a bigger stake in the outcome of the upcoming provincial election than Quebec's students, who have been battling the Liberal government for six months, writes Karen Seidman for The Montreal Gazette.
UNITED STATES
Last year, Georgia lawmakers mulled over a bill that would have barred undocumented immigrants from attending college. A group of college professors then banded together to offer those students an education. Now a similar effort to Freedom University, as it was called, is going national, reports Associated Press.
UNITED STATES
Striking a blow against a Silicon Valley institution that attracted foreigners with student visas, US federal agents last week raided Herguan University and charged its CEO with visa fraud, write Lisa M Krieger and Molly Vorwerck for San Jose Mercury News.
UNITED KINGDOM
The points-based system used by students applying to higher education is now likely to be scrapped after the move gained widespread support from universities and schools, writes Alison Kershaw for The Independent.
NIGERIA
The acting chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, Ekpo Nta, has said it is set to purge Nigeria’s university system of the menace of corruption with the collaboration of the National Universities Commission, writes Favour Nnabugwu for Vanguard.
SOUTH AFRICA
The billions of rand allocated to South Africa’s sector education and training authorities must be diverted from private training providers to further education and training colleges, says Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande, writes Karl Gernetzky for Business Day.
UNITED STATES
Public university employees in America can expect two things from their universities over the next few years: new programmes with an emphasis on increasing tuition fee revenues, and a whole host of ‘operational efficiency’ initiatives designed to get more bang for each buck, writes Kevin Kiley for Inside Higher Ed.
PERU
The Holy See’s denial of a top Peruvian university’s right to call itself ‘pontifical’ and ‘Catholic’ is the latest battle – but unlikely the last – in a long conflict over what it means to be a Catholic university, writes Alejandro Bermudez for the National Catholic Register.
UNITED STATES
Columbia University will start an Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering in New York City. The institute, which will be housed at Columbia’s existing campuses in Morningside Heights and Washington Heights, is expected to employ 75 new faculty members over the next 15 years, writes Henry Goldman for Bloomberg.
CHINA
A professor has been fired by his university and disqualified from China's Recruitment Programme of Global Experts for copying his resumé and academic articles from three other academics with the same name, writes Xu Chi for Shanghai Daily.
TAIWAN
A Taiwanese university has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple, claiming that its Siri software infringes on two of the university’s patents, writes Salvador Rodriquez for the Los Angeles Times.
UNITED KINGDOM
Oxford University students will no longer have to wear gender-specific academic clothing, after concerns that it was unfair to the transgender community. It will mean men can attend formal occasions in skirts and stockings and women in suits and bow ties, reports the BBC.
SYRIA
Wedged between the Sunni neighbourhood of Baba Amr to the west and Alawite areas to the east, the Al Baath University campus is at the heart of the conflict that has ripped apart Syria's opposition stronghold of Homs, write Samer Mohajer and Loveday Morris for The National.
UNITED STATES
Because many Chinese students have trouble making sense of the American admissions process, a huge industry of education agents has arisen in China to help guide them – and, in some cases, to do whatever it takes to get them accepted, writes Justin Bergman for Time.
GERMANY
Eight years ago, Germany announced that its universities would compete for several billion dollars in public funds to spur them to distinguish themselves on the national and world stage. Other countries took notice, with some attempting similar strategies to vault their universities into the upper echelons of global rankings, writes Aisha Labi for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
