NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

Yojana Sharma

Academics at a number of British universities have reported a rise in xenophobic abuse since the 23 June referendum result in favour of the country leaving the European Union. The pro-Brexit campaign featured widespread anti-European and anti-immigration rhetoric.

David Jobbins

A leading university in the Netherlands has responded to the United Kingdom’s referendum vote to quit the European Union by encouraging British students to enrol for the new academic year – to cash in on the low fees paid by EU students while they still can.

Yojana Sharma

China’s announcement last week of new Education Minister Chen Baosheng, a former Communist Party chief of the Chinese Academy of Governance, has taken many academics by surprise. But analysts said major higher education policies – particularly promoting world-class research – will continue.

Karuna Narayan and Yojana Sharma

Smriti Irani, India’s controversial minister of human resource development – which includes responsibility for higher education – was unexpectedly removed from the ministry by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a cabinet reshuffle last week. Academics and students welcomed her exit.

Gilbert Nakweya

For African universities, space science represents an important and as yet underutilised opportunity to develop science and technology capacity geared towards sustainable development. This was one of the key messages of a United Nations conference on space technologies for wildlife management and protecting biodiversity held in Kenya.

Wagdy Sawahel

The northwest African nation of Mauritania is to set up a supreme council for scientific research and innovation to strengthen the capability of universities and research institutions in science, technology and innovation-based development.

TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP

In this Special Report that forms part of a series on Transformative Leadership, published in partnership with The MasterCard Foundation, University World News looks at barriers to gender equality of opportunity and influence, the role of women’s leadership in change and the part that universities can play.

Jennifer Murtazashvili and Aarya Nijat

Women leaders in Afghanistan appear imposed from above, often to placate foreign donors. To truly transform Afghan society, they need to develop more links with grassroots movements and to engage with men in their families and in their communities.

Brendan O'Malley

Gender inequalities remain deeply entrenched in every society, the United Nations says, but the international consensus on the need to achieve gender equality is stronger than ever – and universities have their own part to play.

Jennifer Piscopo

What can universities learn from women’s transformative leadership in politics and business? One lesson is that women tend to win top posts at times of crisis and that can shorten their time in office.

Kate White

A lot of attention has focused on getting women into leadership roles in higher education, but little has been paid to what actually works. A new project aims to address that gap.

Nompumelelo Motlafi

Feminist studies have been dominated by white feminists. It is time for black academics and students to transform the debate and for different forms of feminism to be part of the decolonisation movement.

Emma Sabzalieva

The gender gap in higher education participation is uneven across Central Asia, but it is not simply down to investment. Many other factors may play a role.

Melody Viczko

Women seeking leadership ought to challenge the ways in which they are positioned by universities. Let’s flip the mentorship concept on its head, asking who needs to be mentored in order for change to happen? Let’s ask what kinds of universities we want to lead and invest our labour towards creating institutions that inspire great leadership.

WORLD BLOG

Creso M Sá and Emma Sabzalieva

Some in Canada may spot a chance to compete for the European Union students the United Kingdom may lose post-Brexit. But in the end, researchers around the world are poorer as a result of the British referendum result.

COMMENTARY

Anne Corbett

Universities in the United Kingdom are in shock. So much collaboration between UK and other European universities has arisen from membership of the European Union. Now is the time to forge and deepen the UK’s European links through associations like the Coimbra Group and the European University Association.

Michele Meoli and Stefano Paleari

European universities need to rediscover their values and confront the challenges created by massification and globalisation.

Mark Ashwill

Bob Kerrey’s appointment as chair of the board of trustees of Fulbright University Vietnam has raised questions due to Kerrey’s past war record, and risks tainting the whole project.

James Buchanan

Student activists in Thailand face arrest and are shunned by the wider student population while those in Hong Kong have won widespread support. Why?

Ian Freckelton QC

Most scientists and medical researchers behave ethically. However, in recent years, the number of high-profile scandals in which researchers have been exposed as having falsified their data raises the issue of how we should deal with research fraud.

FEATURES

Jan Petter Myklebust

When it comes to research and development in proportion to gross domestic product, Sweden is one of the highest spenders in the world. But new data show that spending in relation to GDP has fallen over the past decade, fuelled by a declining contribution by the private business sector, which makes up nearly 70% of total research and development investments.

Munyaradzi Makoni

Following serial protests over the use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction, the universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch last month adopted new language policies. The moves have raised the ire of Afrikaans rights groups who accuse the institutions of turning their backs on Afrikaners and their language.

Jack Stripling, The Chronicle of Higher Education

By Donald J Trump’s own account, he saw higher education as a means to an end. Fordham University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania were essentially credential factories. To become the real estate mogul he envisioned, he needed these institutions – but in the same dispassionate way that a mechanic, say, needs a socket wrench.

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WORLD ROUND-UP

In a pitch to college students and their families, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton expanded the scope of her higher education platform last week with a proposal to eliminate tuition at public colleges and universities for many students, writes Lauren Camera for US News.

Leading universities will offer fully accredited undergraduate courses online within five years, says the founder of a leading United States online university network, writes Sean Coughlan for the BBC.

Nearly one in five United Kingdom researchers has fabricated data, while one in seven has committed plagiarism, according to a recently published survey of 215 British academics, writes Bob Grant for The Scientist.

Part-time lecturers working at private universities and members of the Taiwan Higher Education Union protested last week in front of the Ministry of Education, calling on it to promulgate rules to ensure that some 46,000 lecturers at private institutions are paid the same hourly rates as their counterparts at public institutions, writes Sean Lin for Taipei Times.

An increasingly heavy reliance on academic casual positions – believed to have risen by 221% between 1989 and 2013 – has prompted universities to question whether staffing patterns are undermining the education experience of students, writes Julie Hare for The Australian.

Honduran riot police arrested at least 12 students on 1 July, out of hundreds who occupied the buildings of the National Autonomous University of Honduras to protest against the privatisation of universities across the country, reports Telesur.

In a move that could reignite #FeesMustFall protests, university fees could rise by as much as 6% in 2017 following a 2016 moratorium that set institutions and the state back billions of rand. However, #FeesMustFall campaigners say they will dig in their heels and fight any proposed increases again, if needs be, writes Fiona Forde for BDLive.

Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet last Wednesday endorsed her government’s goal of making free universal higher education a reality for Chilean youth, reports PGurus.

The University of Papua New Guinea's council has terminated all teaching activities for the remainder of the year, after a student boycott of classes led to violence, writes Eric Tlozek for ABC News.

Some 34% of academic theses in Turkey have high plagiarism rates, according to a report by the Education Policy Research and Application Centre of Istanbul’s Bogaziçi University, reports Hurriyet Daily News.

Academics have criticised note-sharing websites that allow students to buy cheap study notes as they think it will stop them attending class, writes Max Margan for Daily Mail Australia.

Over 50,000 new graduates in the United Kingdom are in non-graduate jobs – including lollipop ladies, factory workers and hospital porters – new figures showed, writes Javier Espinoza for The Telegraph.

The University of Tennessee has settled for US$2.48 million a lawsuit involving eight women who argued the university allowed a hostile sexual culture to fester, which led to sexual assaults by student athletes, writes Curtis Skinner for Reuters.

School leavers’ chances of joining public universities in Kenya increased recently when admission slots were increased by 6,000, write Moses Nyamori and Augustine Oduor for the Standard.

The United Kingdom risks losing over 33,000 much-needed female scientists each year as students consider walking away from the subject post-graduation, writes Aftab Ali for the Independent.

Many lecturers in universities across Nigeria are reportedly complaining about the challenges they are facing due to not having been paid in 13 months, writes Olamide Oni for Pulse.

Delhi University lecturers, who were boycotting evaluation and undergraduate admissions in protest against new University Grants Commission norms to ascertain their academic performance, have decided to end the boycott of the enrolment process, reports the Press Trust of India.

A 24-year-old entrepreneur has launched a one-stop website offering information to foreign students who want to study in Japan, writes Magdalena Osumi for The Japan Times.

Indonesia may lose prospective students due to the timing of its state university entrance test, writes Ni Nyoman Wira for The Jakarta Post.

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