NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

Yojana Sharma

The Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Education 2030, are providing renewed impetus for higher education qualification recognition across borders. Delegates at a meeting of Asia-Pacific countries hosted by UNESCO recently agreed to the Sydney Statement on “fair and effective” qualifications recognition and quality assurance practices in line with Education 2030’s focus on equitable quality education.

Yojana Sharma

Universities in Japan and South Korea dominate a ranking of Asia’s most innovative universities based on data from publishing giant Thomson Reuters. Of the top 20, 17 are in Japan and South Korea, with Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Japan’s University of Tokyo heading the pack, according to the ranking released last week.

David Jobbins

Campaigners in the United Kingdom are redoubling their efforts to end sexual harassment of students by university academics in the wake of suggestions that non-disclosure agreements are preventing greater awareness of the issue.

Munyaradzi Makoni

Dwindling government funding and graduate unemployment are just two of the factors contributing to the need for African universities to embrace entrepreneurship in teaching, research, and in the way in which institutions are run, according to an African expert.

Paul Basken, The Chronicle of Higher Education

The rising number of predatory journals has become a major blight on academic publishing, deceiving authors, their institutions, and the wider scientific community. And now the United States federal government is fighting back.

Michael Gardner

Universities Austria has sharply criticised what it regards as an attempt by the Kronen Zeitung, the country’s largest newspaper, to “discredit efforts to integrate refugees”. Austrian universities introduced special programmes to support refugee students and academics last year.

Jan Petter Myklebust

A study by the Danish Evaluation Institute has shown that both study-relevant work and participation in project-oriented courses have a significant positive effect upon the chances of Danish masters students landing a job upon graduation and the salary received, while a study abroad period does not have as positive an effect on work chances or salary after graduation.

Tonderayi Mukeredzi

Zimbabwe has officially added two new universities to a bevy of existing ones as the cash-strapped government surges ahead with its policy to establish a university in each of the country’s 10 provinces. There are bills for another two universities before Parliament. With existing universities seriously under-funded, critics wonder where the cash will come from.

HE INTERNATIONALISATION CONFERENCE

The first Global Conference on the Internationalisation of Higher Education was held in Kruger National Park from 22-24 August, hosted by the International Education Association of South Africa. University World News was the media partner.

Karen MacGregor

There were 250 delegates from 28 countries at the first Global Conference on the Internationalisation of Higher Education, more than a third of them from outside host country South Africa. The idea was to create an inclusive platform where voices from the global South and North would carry equal weight in an internationalisation debate – within a safari environment that provokes thoughts about life itself.

Nicola Jenvey

Disruptions to higher education systems and deliveries are fundamentally changing the perceptions of access to information and university attendance, while giving developing countries an advantage over the developed world, says Rob Brown of global education group Navitas.

Karen MacGregor

“Education is more than access to information. Education is also a way to see that information in itself is not education,” says Dutch higher education expert Hanneke Teekens. Therefore, universities will remain very important institutions that produce leaders, “especially in an intercultural context and in an interconnecting world”.

Karen MacGregor

Developments over three decades have placed one issue centrally on the agenda for higher education internationalisation – the huge and growing challenge of global inequality – says Professor Derrick Swartz, vice-chancellor of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa.

Karen MacGregor

With nearly five million study abroad students worldwide and millions of refugees escaping conflict or in search of a better life, international credential evaluation has never been more important, says evaluation expert Margaret Wenger. Today digital data is transforming the field, speeding up evaluation and supporting student mobility – but there are challenges.

Gautam Rajkhowa

India must clearly define its higher education policy objectives to be both globally and locally relevant in order to benefit from increased global student mobility and growing internationalisation. India has potential, and clear policy could secure the country a formidable global standing in higher education.

Karen MacGregor

Two of the biggest and fastest-growing economic sectors in Africa are churches and higher education. This has captured political attention and today the university sector is experiencing a positive turnaround and is seen as key to Africa’s economic development, says Teboho Moja, professor of higher education at New York University.

Peta Lee

Internationalisation strategies and resources are being strengthened at universities across South Africa by a European Commission-supported initiative, IMPALA – Internationalisation and Modernisation Programme for Academics, Leaders and Administrators – which is named after the ubiquitous antelope that graces the country’s game reserves.

TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP

Judith Eaton

International bodies have issued advice on how to combat one of the key ethical issues in higher education: corruption. Since it was issued, higher education institutions have been sharing best practice in an effort to provide the transformational leadership required in this area.

COMMENTARY

Tom P Abeles

The university is changing fast and this means we need to question what skills students need and what competencies faculty require to teach them.

Ranjit Goswami

A one-size-fits-all approach to teaching will not raise quality in an era of mass expansion in enrolment. There is no quick fix to raising higher education quality and the different abilities of students who enter university must be taken into account.

WORLD BLOG

Hans de Wit, Andrés Bernasconi and Daniela Véliz-Calderón

A study of Catholic universities shows a disconnect between their religious identity and their internationalisation policies. Both, indeed, are in a state of flux.

FEATURES

Nic Mitchell

United Kingdom universities are starting to look seriously at the European mainland to expand transnational higher education, or TNE, following fears that the number of European Union students in Britain could dramatically decline after Brexit.

Geoff Maslen

If you Google “How many good university guides around the world?”, 673 million results pop up in 0.67 seconds. The world is flooded with publications and web pages offering guides to the top universities in America, Africa, Australia, Britain, Canada... Then there are the guides to leading universities in particular fields and the top institutions in certain regions – not to forget the growing number of publications that provide world university rankings.

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WORLD ROUND-UP

Recent data shows that southern states have been disproportionately cutting spending on public higher education, forcing tuition increases that make their colleges and universities among the least affordable for the poorest families – who already face some of the nation’s highest poverty rates, writes Timothy Pratt for The Hechinger Report.

The whole European research system would suffer if it no longer included the UK and Switzerland, according to the president of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, one of the world's leading universities, writes John Morgan for Times Higher Education.

China is eager to improve the standing of its higher education sector, wanting it to match the country’s economic clout, but a blueprint released late last year aimed at boosting the construction of “world-class universities and world-class majors” has been widely criticised as “old wine in a new bottle”, writes Alice Yan for South China Morning Post.

Prime Minister Theresa May is set to scrutinise the number of student visas being granted to United Kingdom university applicants in a fresh attempt to reduce immigration, writes Peter Yeung for the Independent.

A survey by a local newspaper has indicated that more than half of Dutch university courses are now taught entirely in English in a bid to keep institutions competitive, to reflect the internationalisation of education and to attract foreign students, reports Dutch News.

Donald Trump and his now-defunct real-estate university lost another legal attempt to block former students from suing as a group in a California case accusing the Republican presidential candidate of fraud, writes Erik Larson for Bloomberg.

Professor Jonathan Jansen has warned that another 0% fee increase for tertiary institutions will be a death knell for universities, writes Lauren Kansley for the Mail & Guardian.

University of Chicago students should not expect to get ‘trigger warnings’ before professors talk about sensitive topics, or ‘safe spaces’ where they can gather with others to avoid a speaker whom they find offensive, entering students were told recently, writes Susan Svrluga for The Washington Post.

With little international recognition, Colombia has been more engaged with international trends in higher education than just about any other country in Latin America. In fact, Colombia seems to be the only country in Latin America that has developed and sustained a coherent national policy for the development of higher education for several decades, taking into consideration the major issues confronting all countries today, writes Liz Reisberg for Inside Higher Ed.

All private higher education institutions in Cambodia will only have to pay a 1% tax on their income till 2018, according to a prakas or regulation issued by the Ministry of Economy and Finance recently, to help shoulder the government’s financial burden for expanding access to university education, reports the Khmer Times.

A Catholic university in Mexico City said the president of Mexico met the requirements for graduation with a law degree, while acknowledging parts of his 1991 thesis were plagiarised, reports Catholic News Service.

Volodymyr Kharchenko, the acting rector of National Aviation University of Ukraine, was detained on 26 August on charges of taking a €100,000 (US$112,000) bribe for a job appointment. In turn, Kharchenko claims he was set up, writes Veronika Melkozerova for the Kyiv Post.

Four top South African universities have been summoned to account for how they use their budget to advance gender transformation and monitor gender violence on campuses, writes Roland Mpofu for IOL.

Hundreds of universities are continuing to seek students to fulfil enrolment goals as less prestigious state-owned and private universities as well as state-owned universities have complained they lack students, which is a new phenomenon, reports VietNamNet Bridge.

A high percentage of foreign students enrolled in institutions of higher education remain in Finland after their graduation, said CIMO, an expert organisation providing services on international mobility and cooperation, reports Finland Times.

More Singaporeans are heading Down Under for their university degrees, on the back of the fall in the Australian dollar last year. And, with Singapore recognising more degrees obtained there, numbers are expected to pick up even more, writes Amelia Teng for The Straits Times.

On his first day as chairman of the Southern African Development Community or SADC, His Majesty King Mswati III of Swaziland announced the launch of the SADC University of Transformation, writes Gugu Simelane for the Swazi Observer.

At the age of 102, Australia's oldest working scientist says he has not given up hope he can retain his office and freedom on campus after a Perth university told him to leave his post, writes Laura Gartry for ABC News.

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