NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

Karen MacGregor

The United States showed “signs of decline” in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2015-2016, as did Japan and South Korea. Countries with improved performances in an expanded ranking that examined 1,128 universities worldwide and doubled its list to 800, include the United Kingdom and Germany.

Wagdy Sawahel

Recommendations for strengthening African universities were agreed at a high-level event last weekend, held alongside the United Nations General Assembly meeting to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals. The proposals include promoting student mobility, postgraduate research, centres of excellence and partnerships.

Suchitra Behal

A country specific framework for ranking Indian higher education institutions has been rolled out by the government. This initiative is a response to global rankings in which Indian universities and colleges usually do not fare too well.

Geoff Maslen

The new government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has backed away from plans to allow universities to set their own tuition fees and announced that funding arrangements for 2016 will not be changed, ruling them out before the next election. The government will hold further consultations with the sector on future reforms.

Linda Yeung

A decision last week by the University of Hong Kong’s governing council to reject the proposed appointment of a liberal former law faculty dean as pro-vice-chancellor has triggered accusations of external interference in the university’s governance.

Brendan O'Malley

Some 77,000 more students from the US will study abroad annually over the next five years as a result of rising support for the Institute of International Education or IIE's Generation Study Abroad initiative. This will bring the total studying abroad each year to 452,000, but more is needed to raise that number to the target of 600,000 a year, the IIE told University World News.

Jan Petter Myklebust and Ian R Dobson

The research world has reacted angrily to the government’s 2016 budget proposal to cut DKK1.4 billion (US$210 million) off the DKK22 billion research budget. Universities and institute research will be hit the hardest.

Jane Marshall

As a record number of students start the new university year, the government has announced that higher education and research are priorities and their 2016 budget has been spared from cuts and an extra €100 million (US$113 million) for higher education will be made available.

Wagdy Sawahel

The Anglican Church in Zimbabwe is to open its first university, in the east of the country – the latest of several church groups to establish a higher education institution. The new university will open next academic year and will specialise in health-related disciplines.

Michael Gardner

As yet another German politician is facing allegations of lifting material for their academic work, law experts have started to discuss whether a statute of limitation would make sense for cases of academic plagiarism. Meanwhile, Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen has denied the allegations and is taking action to clear her academic reputation.

Suvendrini Kakuchi

The Council on International Educational Exchange, Japan chapter, is to offer scholarships for Japanese university students to take up during the summer from 2016. The focus on international study reflects a growing commitment by universities to increased internationalisation under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Maina Waruru

Reforms aimed at streamlining technical and vocational education and training in Kenya could be fully implemented by the end of this year with the creation of a funding board. The government hopes that revitalising the sector will help tackle a huge unemployment problem – there are an estimated five million youths jobless or under-employed.

COMMENTARY

Nicholas Dirks

Funding cuts threaten the great public universities’ mission to widen access and promote excellence. But through global partnerships, a focus on global issues and links with industry, world-class universities can continue to do both.

Graeme Atherton

Lack of equitable access to higher education has been recognised by the United Nations as a driver of poverty. Universities need to take responsibility for tackling it and to think boldly about how they do that.

Ly Pham

A university’s decision to develop its own criteria for promotion to professor level has initiated a debate about university autonomy and accountability.

WORLD BLOG

Patrick Blessinger

Going to university cannot guarantee a certain type of job in a constantly shifting world economy, but it can equip people with the skills by which to learn – and keep learning – how to adapt to changing economic and social conditions.

FEATURES

Jan Petter Myklebust

The drop in the success rate of universities bidding for Horizon 2020 funding is being driven by increased demand from universities suffering from austerity programmes, according to the European University Association.

Eric Hoover, The Chronicle of Higher Education

A coalition of 80 selective public and private colleges has announced a radical overhaul of the admissions process. Does it make a revolutionary shift in how students prepare for college or is it just a noble-sounding branding campaign?

Karen MacGregor

With graduate joblessness rising and state funding dwindling, universities of technology are confronted by dual challenges – delivering entrepreneurship education and work-integrated learning to students, and themselves becoming more entrepreneurial – says Professor Irene Moutlana, vice-chancellor of Vaal University of Technology and deputy chair of the South African Technology Network.

SCIENCE SCENE

Paul Rigg

Four spoons of olive oil per day reduce the risk of suffering breast cancer by 66%, according to a Spanish study led by Professor Miguel Ángel Martínez-González, a head of department in the faculty of medicine at the University of Navarra.

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WORLD ROUND-UP

Iran has given permission for five Americans to study in a Tehran University masters programme. Others are enrolling in Persian language classes. Even as denunciations of the nuclear deal still echo in the US and Iran, the mid-July breakthrough already appears to have quietly enabled the first steps in academic diplomacy between the two countries, writes Scott Peterson for The Christian Science Monitor.

More than three-quarters of England’s universities are set to miss carbon reduction targets for 2020, writes Helen Lock for the Guardian.

Australia will not develop the innovative economy envisaged by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull unless it stops rewarding mediocrity and ditches a culture of "every child gets a prize", the nation's most prestigious universities argue, writes Matthew Knott for The Sydney Morning Herald.

A counter-terrorism student has spoken of his shock after he was allegedly falsely accused by university staff of being a potential terrorist – because he was reading a textbook on terrorism, writes Sophie Jane Evans for Mail Online.

This year’s return to university has been mired in controversy over students’ political activities, with a senior university head threatening to “cut off the heads” of students who organise demonstrations without prior permission, reports the Middle East Eye.

University students across France have taken to social media to share pictures of their overflowing lecture theatres, in a bid to raise the alarm bells, reports The Local.fr. There are an additional 65,000 students at universities in France this term taking the total up to 2.5 million – and the students themselves are feeling a little cramped.

After a boom in 2005-10, many private-owned universities and colleges in Vietnam are now struggling to survive losses caused by a critical shortage of students, reports Thanh Nien News.

The “deluge” of new scientific papers that academics have to read makes it all but impossible to know what research to trust, according to a new paper based on candid interviews with biomedical researchers, writes David Matthews for Times Higher Education.

Until a decade ago or so, Japanese was one of the most popular languages studied by elite students in North Korea, even though the two countries have never had good relations, diplomatic or otherwise. But today the situation is very different, writes Takuya Karube for Kyodo.

A student protest in Paraguay that has forced a university president suspected of corruption to step down, entered its second week last Tuesday, with students guarding the campus around the clock, allegedly to prevent evidence tampering, writes Joseph Bamat for France24.

Investing in a “bold programme of support” for short-term domestic and international student mobility is one of the key recommendations outlined in a policy brief released by Universities Canada before the October 19 election, writes Beckie Smith for The PIE News.

A Cambridge don made up bogus archaeological projects in a bid to steal more than £220,000 (US$333,500) of lottery grants, writes Nicola Harley for The Telegraph.

The University of San Francisco became the latest institution of higher education to strip comedian Bill Cosby of an honorary degree, following a string of accusations that he drugged women and sexually assaulted them, writes Lisa Fernandez for NBC Bay Area News.

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