NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

Ameen Amjad Khan

Academics are demanding better security for education institutions after a brutal terrorist attack on Wednesday morning on Bacha Khan University in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that left at least 20 dead – including students and two staff members – and many injured.

Brendan O'Malley and Michael Gardner

The International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies, which has 80 member organisations across the world, has issued a statement demanding that the Turkish government “desist from threatening academics”. The statement is supported by 28 Nobel Prize laureates amid growing international concern over investigations being carried out into 1,128 academics who signed a petition criticising military operations in south-east Turkey.

Munyaradzi Makoni

Consortium members of a new three-year Harmonisation of African Higher Education Quality Assurance and Accreditation initiative met in Brussels this month and outlined activities for the first year of the European Union-backed operation.

Suvendrini Kakuchi

Japan’s education ministry officials have softened a controversial stance publicised in June 2015 to favour university science courses over the humanities and social sciences for state funding after it sparked an uproar among the academic community. Universities are drawing up their reform plans, including pledges to increase the number of foreign students and staff.

Binod Ghimire

An unofficial blockade since September, allegedly imposed by Nepal’s Southern neighbour India, is threatening to delay research and theses that depend on scientific experiments, while also affecting day to day administration at many institutions. A majority of academic institutions have been struggling to operate amid a resulting severe fuel shortage.

Jan Petter Myklebust and Ian R Dobson

The latest austerity measures announced by the Finnish government are likely to bring the total number of posts cut since 2012 at Finnish universities and polytechnics to 5,200 and the total budget reductions since the start of 2012 to €280 million (US$305 million).

Wagdy Sawahel

Tunisia declared a night curfew in the central city of Kasserine after clashes last weekend between police and young unemployed graduates demonstrating for jobs. Protests have since spread around the country, with deaths reported and nearly 250 protesters injured.

Maina Waruru

Kenya’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is disbanding the councils of all public universities and their constituent colleges after a court ruled that the councils, as currently constituted, are in breach of the Universities Act and the country’s constitution.

Mary Beth Marklein

The United States firm that owns the SAT, a college entrance exam accepted by many US colleges and universities, cancelled plans to administer the test this weekend at centres in China and Macau following concerns that some students may have obtained information about questions in advance.

Jan Petter Myklebust

Copenhagen University will admit no students in 2016 in a raft of smaller subjects including Finnish, Polish and Eskimology – despite being the only place in the world offering a bachelor and masters degree in the language, society and culture of Greenland. The university said the move was necessary because of austerity cuts.

AFRICA: UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP

Karen MacGregor

Governance models in African higher education have evolved over the decades, but their impact on university leadership appears not to have been highly significant. The key drivers of quality leadership are factors such as individual capacities, leadership training and state funding, according to new research.

COMMENTARY

Lawrence Phillips

A liberal education, delivered in an international environment, may be the answer to addressing the threat of extremism and radicalisation in young people.

Phan Le Ha

The second of our series on John Douglass’ New Flagship University model considers how it could work in Australia, where a focus on research has meant a neglect of the value of teaching excellence, and in Vietnam, where, despite great challenges, there are some seeds of hope for the future.

Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela

The vote to provide free higher education to the country’s poorest students confronts the growing marketisation of the sector, but there are many more hurdles to overcome to provide more equal access to knowledge.

Thanh Nguyen

As higher education becomes more consumer based, universities will need to respond to growing demands from students to teach them the skills they need to get a job.

WORLD BLOG

Nita Temmerman

The labour market demands graduates who are at ease with different cultures. The education system, from nursery to college and university, needs to adapt to a fast-changing world.

FEATURES

Robin Lally

Most people wouldn't consider setting foot in a prison, much less volunteering to teach incarcerated men and women the skills they need to succeed upon release. Not Donald Roden. And the results have been life-changing – for the prisoners.

Brendan O'Malley

A political furore and student protests have broken out over the suicide of a 28-year-old research student and campaigner for the rights of Dalit communities at the Hyderabad Central University, who was found hanging in a university hostel room on the campus last Sunday, according to the police.

Rio Fernandes, The Chronicle of Higher Education

A months-old blog post on ‘feminist fog’ written by a respected medieval scholar, Allen J Frantzen, has gained a second life on social media – and whipped the discipline into a frenzy.

SCIENCE SCENE

Mandi O’Garretty

Smaller is better when it comes to the size of the plates we eat our food off: smaller plates can affect how much food we eat and even help overcome the obesity crisis affecting Western nations, according to a new study.

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WORLD ROUND-UP

According to official figures, the number of Indian students attending British universities has fallen by 10% over the last year in the wake of concerns about immigration, writes Sarah Cassidy for the Independent.

Ninety-one percent of the nation’s colleges have told the federal government there were no rapes reported on their campuses in 2014, a statistic that the American Association of University Women said “defies reality", writes Courtney Kueppers for The Washington Post.

In a blow to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, the Association of American Universities issued a statement reaffirming its opposition to boycotts of Israeli academic institutions, reports The Jerusalem Post.

A third-level strategy due to be published in the coming weeks has set out a significant increase in the numbers of international students entering the higher education system in the next five years, writes Elaine Loughlin for the Irish Examiner.

In his keynote speech during the first session of the ‘People’s University’, organised by the Popular Movement party, Lahcen Daoudi, Morocco’s minister of higher education and scientific research and training, criticised the exploitation of the issue of Tamazight to “fight the Arabic language and Islam”, writes Ezzoubeir Jabrane for Morocco World News.

According to news reports, a hacker proclaiming allegiance to the Islamic State jihadist group infiltrated the internal network of one of China's top universities to display images of masked and mounted militants, reports AFP.

A video camera and two plastic chairs sit in a tiny room in Beijing’s west side, the latest weapons in a global battle against the wave of admissions fraud striking United States universities. College-bound Chinese students come here to InitialView, one of several such companies operating in the country, to film a video interview and prove their speaking abilities match their applications, write Laura Krantz and Jessica Meyers for The Boston Globe.

A second Oxford University college has entered a row over Cecil Rhodes’ legacy after members of the student ‘union’ voted to have his name removed from its computer room, writes Javier Espinoza for The Telegraph.

Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande says the time has come for students to return to lecture halls and prevent an increase in already skyrocketing costs following damage to property, reports Aurelie Kalenga for EWN.

The Russell Group of universities, which represents Oxford, Cambridge and 22 other leading institutions, have all demanded that they should be exempted from Freedom of Information Laws, because they are private institutions and not public bodies, writes Laura Hughes for The Telegraph.

Mozambique's oldest and most prestigious higher education institution, Eduardo Mondlane University, will from this year introduce a degree course in Chinese, making Mozambique one of the first countries in the Southern African region to do so, reports Xinhua. The degree course will be conducted through the university's three-year-old Confucius Institute.

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