NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

Brendan O’Malley

United States universities again dominate the US News & World Report Rankings, claiming the five top spots for the first time and taking 210 places out of 1,000 research universities evaluated, expanded from 750 last year – from 65 countries.

Sharon Dell

Amid ongoing threats to shut down the sector, and in the absence of a long-term plan to fund higher education, vice-chancellors of South Africa's 26 public universities last week issued a public "call to action", imploring all South Africans to work with universities to ensure the successful completion of the academic year.

Dinesh De Alwis

A wave of protests, violence and strikes has gripped Sri Lanka in the past week amid national and international condemnation following the deaths of two University of Jaffna students after police shootings.

Yojana Sharma

The coming year will see almost 20% slashed from the combined operating budgets of Malaysia’s public universities, according to the 2017 budget announced on Friday 21 October. It will be an even bigger cutback than the 16% drop universities suffered from the 2016 budget, which led to a public outcry.

Brendan O'Malley

Applications from European Union countries for places on medicine, dentistry and veterinary degrees in the United Kingdom and for all courses at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge have fallen by 9% in a year, ending a trend of annual increases over recent years, according to new figures.

Michael Gardner

The German Academic Exchange Service and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have joined forces to support Syrian refugees studying in Turkey and the Middle East.

Tunde Fatunde

Four Nigerian students held by Turkish security agents are yet to be released despite diplomatic pressure from Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.

Jan Petter Myklebust

A new study by the Swedish Higher Education Authority, or UKÄ, shows that 79% of those with a foreign degree who supplemented their qualifications with additional studies in Sweden were established in the labour force three years after having completed their supplementary studies. Another UKÄ study showed that foreigners perform well at Swedish universities.

Christabel Ligami

Fears of a crisis are looming in Tanzania’s higher learning institutions as the government’s failure to timeously disburse student loans has already delayed the start of the 2016-17 academic year.

Laeed Zaghlami

Twelve years after its initial adoption in 2004, the licence-master-doctorate, or LMD, degree structure continues to be subjected to criticism from sections of the academic community and parts of society. While it remains in place as a key component of higher education in the country, the government is increasingly focused on improving its quality and implementation.

COMMENTARY

Hans de Wit and Philip G Altbach

What is at stake for higher education in the United States presidential elections? The divisions are huge and, although higher education has featured very little, the general campaign rhetoric could have significant implications for universities.

Mark Ashwill

The United States election campaign could have a significant impact on the US’s ability to recruit international students from countries like Viet Nam.

Alex Usher

Have countries increased their spending on their world-class universities? In cash-constrained times, it might be worth looking at alternatives to increased funding to boost elite universities.

Adamu A Ahmed

Arab universities need to ensure that the public understands and appreciates their research so they can fully reap the benefits.

TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP

Rebecca C Conklin

A debate, organised by University World News within a larger conference organised by the MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program, examined how universities can encourage women leaders through personal development and institutional assistance.

WORLD BLOG

Nita Temmerman

Student feedback can be fairly revealing, particularly about the things they find annoying about their lecturers. It can also be a good learning experience.

FEATURES

Robert Dragan

The EdTech revolution is only in its infancy. Will this mean the end of the one-size-fits-all model of education? What is certain is that it will push the personalised learning agenda which will improve student experience and, potentially, performance.

Paul Rigg

For the first time in Europe, a 'WOW Room', featuring a 45 square metre video wall, is available for faculty and dozens of university students around the world to interact in a single class.

Peter Schmidt, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Regardless of how Donald J Trump fares on Election Day, he will have profoundly altered not just American politics, but also the way many American professors teach political science.

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WORLD ROUND-UP

A group that has received financing from the Kremlin is under fire over a report that it has been secretly assessing the "protest potential" of students and staff at Russian universities and making its findings available to the authorities, writes Tom Balmforth for Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty.

The human resource development ministry is introducing a carrot and stick approach under which the performing universities will get greater autonomy and poor performers will get their funding cut, writes Prashant K Nanda for Livemint.

In a bid to improve collaboration in education and culture with ASEAN – Association of Southeast Asian Nations – countries, the Chinese government has revealed it hopes to see more students from Southeast Asia studying in China, reports The Jakarta Post.

As Chinese investors flock to Israel in search of new technologies, top universities there are forging cooperation agreements with their Chinese counterparts and firms for research and development as well as technology transfer services, writes Ma Si for China Daily.

The reduction in the allocation to the higher education ministry in the 2017 budget should be viewed positively, according to its minister, as it is in line with efforts to reduce the dependence of public universities on the government, reports Bernama.

President Muhammadu Buhari has said that the era of wasteful spending was over and advised Nigerian universities to plough available resources into teaching, research and productive activities, reports the News Agency of Nigeria.

The National Science Foundation, or NSF, has decided that universities should pay 10% of the salaries of faculty members working temporarily at the agency. It hopes the new policy will demonstrate its commitment to saving taxpayer dollars without alienating the academic community that it relies upon to stay on the cutting edge of basic science, writes Jeffrey Mervis for Science.

A university without any teachers has opened in California this month. It's called 42 – the name taken from the answer to the meaning of life, from the science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy – and will train about a thousand students a year in coding and software development, writes Matt Pickles for the BBC.

On a visit to Hong Kong, the president of a renowned United States liberal arts college has said universities should not take a stance on political matters as that may deter students with different views from expressing their opinions, writes Peace Chiu for South China Morning Post.

Forty-nine Taiwanese universities participated in a Taiwan Higher Education Fair in Indonesia that started last weekend with the aim of attracting more Indonesian students to study in Taiwan as part of President Tsai Ing-wen's ‘new southbound policy’, write Jay Chou and Kuo Chung-han for Focus Taiwan.

Kisii University has closed five of its satellite campuses to comply with a government directive, writes Aggrey Omboki for the Daily Nation.

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