NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

Geoff Maslen

Australian universities are preparing for one of the biggest shake-ups higher education has experienced since a Labor government reshaped the sector by consolidating universities and colleges of advanced education in the late 1980s. Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne appears to be preparing the ground to extend federal funding to for-profit universities and non-university colleges to create an American-style system.

Geoff Maslen

A ‘razor gang’ operating under the title of a “commission of audit” established by Australia’s conservative federal government has called for sweeping changes to the national economy that include widespread cuts in spending and abolition of major science projects with modification of others.

Yojana Sharma

The Chinese government’s decision to scrap free tuition for postgraduate studies – including masters degrees and PhDs – is driving more graduating students to enter the job market instead of remaining in higher education. The trend is likely to intensify the graduate unemployment problem in the country this year.

Jan Petter Myklebust

The European University Association has highlighted potential threats to research posed by the European Parliament’s suggested amendments to a proposal for new European data protection regulations. It is also among more than 60 organisations and academics to have signed a joint statement against the rules.

Tunde Fatunde

Nigeria has asked Ghana’s government to investigate the deaths of four Nigerian students and a school pupil in that country. And on campuses countrywide leaders of the Academic Staff Union of Universities and National Association of Nigerian Students have called on President Goodluck Jonathan to tackle the issue of student safety in Ghana, with a view to preventing the breakdown of bilateral relations between the two countries.

Peta Lee

There will be study or work abroad opportunities for 250,000 Brits between now and 2020, under the Erasmus+ mobility scheme of the European Union, which was launched in London last Monday. Twice as many students going to Britain than UK students going abroad needed to change, said the European Commission’s Androulla Vassiliou.

Wagdy Sawahel

A first joint university involving France and Arab states is to be established in Cairo, aimed at enhancing higher education and research collaboration. The Arab-French University initiative was announced during a visit of the French Arab Universities Union to Benha in northeast Egypt.

Wagdy Sawahel

In an effort to advance the internationalisation of higher education and create global citizens, the University of New England has opened a campus in Tangier, northern Morocco – the first American institution of higher education to open a campus in Africa for its US students.

Going Global

The British Council’s large annual “Going Global” international education conference was held in Miami last week and attracted more than 1,000 higher education, government and business leaders and professionals from over 70 countries. This year’s theme was “Inclusion, Innovation and Impact”.

Karen MacGregor

The sheer scale and mobility of higher education, its continued growth as student populations soar in emerging nations, the world’s transforming demography and unpredictability, and a sector grappling with change in the face of an avalanche of innovation while struggling to prove its worth, were highlighted at the “Going Global” conference in Miami last week – suggesting interesting times ahead for higher education.

Yojana Sharma

Universities searching for the shortest possible route to becoming world-class are looking at the best ‘young’ universities – those established less than 50 years ago – for lessons on how to ‘leapfrog’ to the top.

Karen MacGregor

MOOC providers went head-to-head with developing world academics at the “Going Global” conference in Miami over the opportunities and threats posed by massive open online courses. South African Vice-chancellor Adam Habib called for a conversation on how “to use innovation in a way that supports the global academy of commons rather than simply advancing the individual aspirations of institutions”.

Peta Lee

There are some 183 nationally funded scholarship programmes for outward student mobility around the globe, with 52% of the world’s countries – 102 in all – offering at least one. Yet measuring the impacts and effectiveness of scholarship schemes is rare, according to a study of 11 countries released at the "Going Global" conference in Miami last week.

Yojana Sharma

Rising incomes and a more youthful population in many countries in South Asia have led to a huge increase in women students. Yet this has not been matched by growth in the number of women in leadership roles at universities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

FEATURES

Shuriah Niazi

With India more than halfway through the two months-long general elections that kicked off on 7 April, one of the country’s major institutions – Aligarh Muslim University – has become a focal point of political activities as parties attempt to make an impact on Muslim voters.

Jan Petter Myklebust

Europe’s Knowledge and Innovation Communities have a potential budget of €1 billion (US$1.38 billion) each and the huge collaborative research and postgraduate training networks initiative is well under way. Three KICs have been established and a call for proposals recently went out for another two, with more planned in the coming years.

Nicola Jenvey

A recent decision by a top South African university to discontinue the bachelor of laws degree in favour of a postgraduate qualification has raised mixed reactions. One academic called on other universities to follow suit as the current system produced “legal barbarians” but the Black Lawyers Association accused the university of “acting inappropriately”.

Geoff Maslen

More than 11,000 foreign students from outside Europe applied last year to undertake postgraduate study at Oxford University but only 3,500 received offers of a place. A similar number sent applications to Cambridge, Britain’s other top university, and most also missed out. But a young Aboriginal woman, Jessyca Hutchens, was successful in applying to both and has opted for Oxford where she will join seven other Aborigines already studying there.

WORLD BLOG

Hans de Wit and Jos Beelen

The fourth Global Survey on Internationalization of Higher Education provides information on trends – but the information it presents should not be taken at face value. Much is about perceptions rather than concrete fact, with many people surveyed possibly motivated more by good intentions than by reality.

COMMENTARY

Simon Marginson

The United Kingdom is losing international students due to immigration policies that are seen as unwelcoming, discriminatory, burdensome and intrusive. The policies are a response to growing hostility to immigration in the country.

Leandro R Tessler

The Brazil Scientific Mobility Program has prompted higher education institutions in the United States to flock to Brazil to set up exchanges. But for exchanges to be successful and enduring they have to work both ways.

Kenneth King, The Conversation

While China’s dramatic economic and trade impact on Africa has caught global attention, there has been little focus on its role in education. But there are important questions raised by China’s education push into Africa.

SCIENCE SCENE

In a world first last Thursday, Dutch astronomers revealed that they had determined the length of a day on an exoplanet called Beta Pictoris b: it is eight hours long. The astronomers believe the research may confirm a pattern in the way planets spin in solar systems such as the one in which Earth belongs.

An international team of researchers has discovered the most distant examples of galaxies in the early Universe that were already mature and massive. They were located at a record-breaking distance of 12 billion light years, seen when the Universe was just 1.6 billion years old.

A team of 13 international researchers has uncovered a mechanism that enables plants to better defend themselves against disease-causing pathogens. It offers immeasurable benefits when growing crops susceptible to disease.

The value of Australia's newly established network of marine parks has been highlighted by an international group of biologists who used satellites to track the vulnerable flatback sea turtle. The researchers recorded the passage of more than 70 flatbacks off the northwest Australian coastline.

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WORLD ROUND-UP

As Iraqis prepare to go to the polls to vote in parliamentary elections 10 years on from the invasion, the country is a lifetime away from where things used to be. Iraq’s education system, once one of the best in the Middle East with a series of flourishing universities in the 1960s and 1970s, has suffered dramatically over the past few decades, writes Christopher Hill for The Conversation.

In his flat in central Tehran, Araz Alipour counts on one hand his college friends who have chosen to build a career in Iran. “Easily 90% of them have gone overseas,” the 29-year-old software developer said, reflecting on a middle-class flight that has seen many of the nation’s best scientists and engineers leave, writes Golnar Motevalli for Bloomberg News.

Weaker regional universities in England could struggle for survival in the wake of a brutal United States-style 'beauty contest' for students and their tuition fees, an international credit ratings agency has predicted, writes Richard Adams for the Guardian.

The White House put pressure on American colleges and universities last week to improve their handling of campus s exual assaults, announcing new federal education efforts for students and administrators, new national guidelines of best practices for handling claims and a call for voluntary campus surveys to better understand the scope of the problem, writes Eliza Gray for TIME.

Mary-Faith Cerasoli has been reduced to “sleeping in her car, showering at college athletic centres and applying for food stamps", The New York Times recently reported. Is she unemployed? No, in fact she is a college professor – but an adjunct one, meaning she is hired on a short-term contract with no possibility of tenure, writes Elizabeth Segran for The Atlantic.

The education and science minister has fired the rector of the Russian State Social University after she allegedly heavily plagiarised her doctoral thesis, reports The Moscow Times.

Warnings have been issued about the future recruitment of British PhD students after the director of a doctoral training centre said he was struggling to recruit because of research council funding cuts, writes Holly Else for Times Higher Education.

The number of students accepted by Welsh universities last year increased by almost 6%, figures published recently have shown, writes Gareth Evans for Wales Online.

The standard practice of using progress reports to manage doctoral candidates has been called into question after a study found women tended to report negative experiences of the processes, writes Julie Hare for The Australian.

Considering that after the occupation of Crimea by Russian troops in 2014, the return to the atmosphere and rhetoric of the Cold War is often discussed, I would like to underline what we should not return to: we should not return to attempting to arrange dialogue with 'the devil', writes Serhiy Kvit for the KyivPost.

Universities in Vietnam are racing to recruit permanent lecturers with doctorates to avoid an enrolment ban by the Ministry of Education and Training, with many offering cash and other benefits – including the right to become the co-owners of the institutions – to prospective candidates, reports Tuoitre News.

Korean colleges are hiring more professors on non-guaranteed contracts, as government-led college restructuring has been straining budgets, recent data has shown, reports Yoon Min-sik for The Korea Herald.

The charms of pandas, a delightfully colourful language and the world’s second biggest economy apparently aren’t enough for study abroad students from the United States and United Kingdom: only 1% of American and British students contemplating study abroad options want to go to China, writes Te-Ping Chen for The Wall Street Journal.

An Institute for Fiscal Studies report says ministers in Britain will not know for decades whether their higher education funding shake-up will save money, reports Hannah Richardson for BBC News.

Teenagers from state schools and colleges are claiming fewer places at top universities because of chronic under-funding of post-16 education, according to a report, writes Graeme Paton for The Telegraph.

Zhejiang University, considered one of the top universities in China, is bringing in a new freshman recruitment system this year, in which the national college entrance exam will no longer be the only assessment, writes Yan Yiqi for China Daily.

The National Universities Commission is collaborating with the United Kingdom’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education to further standardise Nigerian tertiary institutions in line with emerging trends, reports This Day.

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