NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

Geoff Maslen

A little more than 25 years ago, an Australian economist called Bruce Chapman devised a brilliant scheme that allowed the federal government to impose tuition fees on the nation’s university students without them having to pay a cent upfront. Now that scheme is being adopted by countries around the globe.

Jan Petter Myklebust

Academics and students across the country called for a national day of action on March 4 as part of widespread protests against government plans for university reforms. In response, the government has backed down on some of its proposed changes and postponed others until 2018.

Ryan Anderson, The Chronicle of Higher Education

The young woman student working for the debt-collecting agency did not know that student loans contain few to no consumer protections. Say what you will about the credit-card industry – at least consumers who get into trouble still have basic legal protections. When it comes to student loans, especially private loans, that’s not the case.

Makki Marseilles

Greek universities were brought to the brink of bankruptcy as a result of the previous government’s policies. After the election of the new left-wing government, universities were hoping to see some of their losses restored but now they will have to wait – and under very strict conditions.

Linda Yeung

Academics are bracing themselves for possible assaults on much-cherished academic freedom in the wake of reported moves by Hong Kong’s chief executive to block the appointment of a pro-democracy academic to a leadership position at Hong Kong University, a top rated university in Asia.

Wagdy Sawahel

Arab Muslim education and scientific staff studying and working in western universities and associated research centres are concerned about their safety following last month’s killings of three Arab students near America’s University of North Carolina.

Jane Marshall

France’s dynamic state secretary for higher education and research, Geneviève Fioraso, has resigned for health reasons.

Michael Gardner

The Global Young Academy, an international society of young scientists, has launched an initiative to support African academics aiming to take leading roles in projects. The Africa Science Leadership Program will be run by the University of Pretoria in South Africa in partnership with the academy.

Gilbert Nganga

Kenya’s students and higher education institutions are eyeing a storm. In the coming nine months, institutions will need funds and infrastructure to enrol tens of thousands more students, following the best-ever performance in school-leaving examinations.

FEATURES

Jane Marshall

Most foreign students from outside the European Union should pay full tuition fees, and these resources – estimated at €850 million (US$940 million) – should be invested to ensure France adapts to the new challenges of internationalising higher education while offering a fair, high-quality, attractive system, says a new report.

Bruce Chapman

At least eight countries around the world have adopted versions of Australia’s Higher Education Contribution Scheme which requires students to pay some of the cost of their degrees and the rest through a government loan. The same method could be applied in many other fields.

COMMENTARY

Adamu A Ahmed

Programmes in Saudi Arabia, Canada and South Africa to appoint heads of research are helping their countries move to a knowledge-based economy.

Abi Mandelbaum

Colleges and universities across the country are increasingly turning to the popular social media platform Snapchat to attract and engage students.

Ranjit Goswami

A recent controversy over the renewal of Professor Amartya Sen’s period at the helm of Nalanda University shows that India needs to address governance issues that are preventing progress in higher education.

WORLD BLOG

Grace Karram Stephenson

Policy decisions on higher education are being reversed in the national interest. But the reason they were taken in the first place, without due account of their impact on universities, was because of a growing void in evidence to back them up.

AFRICAN HIGHER EDUCATION SUMMIT

A new book, Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education, will be launched at the African Higher Education Summit being held in Senegal's capital Dakar next week. It is the latest publication of HERANA – the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa – which for the past seven years has been investigating higher education in eight African countries. This special report highlights key findings arising from the research, which is led by the Centre for Higher Education Transformation and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. University World News is a media partner to both HERANA and the Dakar summit.

Nico Cloete

The ‘revitalisation’ of African universities – whatever that might mean – is a crucial goal but previous efforts to rejuvenate higher education have had disappointing outcomes. Meeting in Dakar next week, African leaders should focus on a few key Bologna-style reforms and their implementation, and the urgent need for research universities, rather than falling again into the trap of aspirational wish lists and calls for action.

Nico Cloete

There is growing recognition across Africa of the importance of research universities for economic growth and development. Countries must build the infrastructure and academic environment, and incentives for doctoral training and research outputs, needed to support emerging research universities across the continent.

Florence Nakayiwa

Research into African flagship universities has provided a viable, internally generated option for assessing performance – including against their stated goals – and has set the stage for African dialogue on appropriate performance measurement mechanisms. But it remains to be seen whether the learning generated will impact on the knowledge production capacities of flagship universities, or whether their mission and vision statements will be modified.

Robert Tijssen

Research internationalisation, effective resource development and strategic management will be indispensable for boosting the scientific power of Africa’s research universities. But most universities do not have clear policies and strategies on managing international cooperation, and in the rush to embrace engagement they run the risk of prioritising quick gains and income generation rather than sustainability and quality.

Nico Cloete, Charles Sheppard, Tracy Bailey and Karen MacGregor

There is a confluence of factors that make South Africa a possible PhD hub for Africa – national policies that stimulate doctoral education, advantages for local universities, and competitive pricing. But there would need to be a rational, research-informed and consultative approach among all collaborators in Africa if there is to be ‘brain circulation’ and not just another continental brain drain with xenophobia and accusatory discourses.

Peter Maassen

Of all their core functions, African universities are struggling the most to revitalise research. All indicators show that despite the existence of highly productive scholars and academic units, overall the research productivity of nationally leading African universities is lagging far behind productivity at similar universities in the rest of the world. Donors need to radically rethink how they support the development of African research universities.

Patrício Langa

What can be done to encourage African academics to produce more research? New policies could reward academics and institutions based on research performance. Governments could tackle problems related to higher education’s rapid expansion and commerc ialisation. And university leaders could rethink expansion strategies, balance undergraduate-postgraduate and junior-senior staff ratios, and initiate much stronger incentives for academics.

Thierry M Luescher-Mamashela

A study has shown that the multiple roles African flagship universities are meant to play in development – in producing and diffusing new values and knowledge, training high-skilled professionals and developing competent citizens and democratic leaders – empirically coincide in terms of student engagement. Policy-makers therefore have a tool to measure and enhance higher education’s contribution to political development and democratisation.

Nico Cloete

The challenge for higher education systems in Africa is not to have universities as societal transformers, or to isolate universities from society into secluded laboratories or the boardrooms of multinational firms, but to develop institutions that are solid and dynamic enough to withstand tensions that will trigger the simultaneous performance of seemingly contradictory functions.

Nico Cloete

It is widely argued that differentiated higher education is needed for research universities to flourish. Studies suggest that differentiated systems are more likely to be achieved by strong, regulating government than by autonomous institutions responding to the market. But there are three problems in Africa – inappropriate policy mimicking, frequent policy changes and disagreements between and among ministers, bureaucrats and university leaders.

SOMMET AFRICAIN POUR L’ENSEIGNEMENT SUPÉRIEUR

Un nouvel ouvrage, Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education, sera présenté au public à l’occasion du Sommet sur l’enseignement supérieur en Afrique, qui se tiendra du 10 au 12 mars à Dakar, capitale du Sénégal. Ce livre est la toute dernière publication du projet HERANA (Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa, réseau de recherche et de promotion de l’enseignement supérieur en Afrique), qui depuis sept ans mène des recherches sur l’enseignement supérieur dans huit pays africains. Ce rapport spécial met en lumière les principaux points observés lors des travaux de recherche menés par le centre pour la transformation de l’enseignement supérieur (CHET), avec le soutien financier de la fondation Carnegie Corporation of New York. University World News est un partenaire médias du projet HERANA et du sommet de Dakar. Les articles qui suivent ont été préparés pour notre lectorat francophone.

Nico Cloete

La « revitalisation » des universités africaines (quel que soit le sens donné à ce terme) est un objectif essentiel, mais jusqu’ici les tentatives de rajeunissement de l’enseignement supérieur n’ont eu que des résultats décevants. Les dirigeants africains, qui se réunissent à Dakar la semaine prochaine, doivent s’inspirer de Bologne pour engager un petit nombre de réformes clés et combler rapidement les besoins en universités de recherche, plutôt que de tomber à nouveau dans le piège des listes d’intentions et des appels à l’action.

Nico Cloete

Dans toute l’Afrique, l’importance des universités de recherche pour la croissance et le développement économiques est de plus en plus reconnue. Les pays doivent bâtir l’infrastructure et l’environnement universitaire et instaurer des incitations à la formation doctorale et aux travaux de recherche, indispensables pour soutenir les universités de recherche qui émergent à travers le continent.

Florence Nakayiwa

Les études portant sur les grandes universités d’Afrique ont apporté un dispositif viable, généré en interne, pour l’évaluation des performances, notamment au regard des objectifs annoncés. Elles posent les bases d’un dialogue africain sur la pertinence des mécanismes de mesure des performances. Mais il reste à observer si l’enseignement généré aura un impact sur les capacités de production de connaissances des grandes universités ou s’il convient de modifier les missions et visions qu’elles mettent en avant.

Nico Cloete

Il est souvent avancé que l’essor des universités de recherche passe par la différenciation de l’enseignement supérieur. Des études suggèrent que les systèmes différenciés ont plus de chance d’être créés par un État imposant une réglementation forte que par des institutions autonomes réagissant au marché. Mais l’Afrique rencontre trois problèmes : le calquage de politiques inadaptées, les changements de politique fréquents, et les désaccords qui opposent et divisent ministres, fonctionnaires et présidents d’université.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Karen MacGregor

From 2012 to 2014, University World News conducted and published a series of interviews with higher education leaders in seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This week we publish a selection of the interviews in a freely available e-book that carries the title of the article series, “Thoughts and Experiences of African University Leaders”.

FACEBOOK

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WORLD ROUND-UP

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls recently announced that the state would finance double the number of university courses on Islam in a bid to stop the influence of foreign funding of training French imams, reports France 24.

A senior Conservative has accused Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable of trying to water down proposals to ban extremist speakers from university campuses, as the coalition partners hit deadlock over planned guidance for universities, writes Elizabeth Rigby for Financial Times.

A major university based in Beijing will open a campus in Tokyo in April, paving the way for Japanese and other students to earn a Chinese degree without studying in China, reports The Japan Times.

Thousands of students have poured into the streets of the Spanish capital, Madrid, and the city of Barcelona to protest against planned government education reforms, reports Press TV.

An online poll by a university magazine shows a growing number of Hong Kong students support independence for the former British colony, amid sliding confidence in the "one country, two systems" formula under which the city is governed, writes Donny Kwok for Reuters.

University officials from around the country fear that a key engine of US innovation and economic power is in danger of stalling: federal investment in basic research, writes Nick Anderson for The Washington Post.

The Higher Education Board in Turkey, known as YÖK, has imposed added measures to prevent graduates with foreign diplomas in medicine, law or engineering from automatically receiving accreditation to practise their profession in Turkey, writes Safure Cantürk for Daily Sabah.

In a week of balloting, students and staff at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London – one of the UK’s top universities – voted to boycott contacts with all Israeli academic institutions in line with the BDS campaign, writes Jerry Lewis for The Jerusalem Post.

More young Brazilians are arriving in Ireland to study science at third level, drawn by instruction in English and the location in Europe, reports Tom Hennigan for The Irish Times.

Universities have been told to double the number of disadvantaged students they admit, in a move that has angered many of Britain's top academic institutions, writes Nicola Harley for The Telegraph.

South African universities have their backs to the wall as the demand for financial assistance outstrips the available state funding and universities have to dig deep into their own pockets to accommodate as many students as possible, writes Wyndham Hartley for BDLive.

The National Immigration Agency has suspended six universities for six months from inviting Chinese academics and students over violations of regulations concerning Chinese academic visits, raising concerns in academic circles on the prospects of cross-strait university exchanges, write Wu Po-hsuan, Wu Chang-hung, and Chen Wei-han for Taipei Times.

After last year's proposed budget redacted A$111 million (US$87 million) in funding from Australia's national science agency, the CSIRO, scientific research in Australia is set to take another funding blow to the tune of A$150 million, writes Michelle Starr for CNET.

Plans for the UK’s first newly built university for three decades were unveiled last week – spec ialising in engineering and aiming for women to comprise half of all its students and teaching staff, writes Richard Garner for The Independent.

The battle between York University and almost 4,000 striking workers over the lack of job security for contract faculty is underscoring a major shift in how undergraduate students are educated across the country, writes Simona Chiose for The Globe and Mail.

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