NEWS – Our correspondents worldwide report
UNITED STATES
White House discussed unilateral ban on Chinese students
Brendan O'Malley
The Trump administration earlier this year considered banning Chinese nationals from studying in the United States, as part of a national security crackdown on industrial espionage, including intellectual property theft – but shelved the proposal, fearing damage to the economy and diplomatic relations.
UNITED STATES
Decline of international graduate enrolment quadruples
Brendan O'Malley
Between fall 2016 and fall 2017, first-time graduate enrolment of international students at universities in the United States fell by 3.7%, a quadrupling of the rate of decrease. Experts have linked the sharp fall with the Trump administration’s hardline visa and immigration policies and rising costs.
CHINA-EUROPE
EU data laws puts China research collaborations at risk
Yojana Sharma
Universities in Europe sharing research data with institutions in China could be in breach of new European Union laws on data protection, legal experts said, a warning that could have an impact on Europe-China research collaborations, particularly in the medical field and artificial intelligence.
KENYA
University cash crisis worsens as state cuts budgets
Gilbert Nganga
Kenya’s beleaguered public universities have been told to further tighten their belts after being slapped with a US$10 million budget cut that will worsen their cash woes, in austerity measures that are meant to avert a looming economic crisis.
MALAYSIA
Minister announces major campus political reforms
Anil Netto
Malaysia’s Education Minister Maszlee Malik last week announced major reforms to overturn laws barring students from campus political activities, lifting restrictions that allow students to hold campus elections only with the permission and oversight of university administrations.
AUSTRIA
University leaders urged to unite against populism
Michael Gardner
A former rector of the Vienna University of Economics and Business has made an emphatic appeal to university leaders to demonstrate solidarity in the face of "growing populism" and ensure that universities counter "issue diagnoses" that are fabricated or exaggerated with evidence and reward critical thought.
MAURITANIA
Protests as government shuts down Islamic HE institutions
Wagdy Sawahel
Student demonstrations erupted and two academics were arrested by Mauritanian police in the outcry following a government shutdown of two Islamic higher education institutions at the end of September, after their teaching licences were revoked due to alleged links with the main opposition Islamic political party and the Muslim Brotherhood.
MOROCCO
Student death at sea highlights education crisis
Wagdy Sawahel
Thousands of students protested after a student was killed by the Moroccan navy during an illegal migration journey at sea, which has highlighted the ongoing emigration by young Moroccans in search of a better education and living standards in Europe.
SWEDEN
Investigation into university governance criticised
Jan Petter Myklebust
The draft reforms of university governance and funding distributed by Sweden’s special investigator on higher education, Professor Pam Fredman, have come under heated criticism from academics and academics’ rights advocates, who say they will sideline academics and reduce university autonomy.
AUSTRALIA
Lawyers and students share unhealthy weight concerns
Geoff Maslen
An obsession with their body weight and shape could be contributing to elevated stress levels among the nation’s lawyers and law students. A research study has found that both groups are far more concerned than the typical Australian about their weight and shape.
COMMENTARY
RUSSIA
Why Putin’s 5-100 project is doomed to fail
Ararat Osipian
President Vladimir Putin’s ambition to get at least five Russian universities into the top 100 in global university rankings by 2020 looks set to fail miserably, judging by the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and lack of true university autonomy is behind the slow progress.
RUSSIA
Does the university system encourage dishonesty?
Igor Chirikov and Evgeniia Shmeleva
Research shows students become more dishonest as they progress through higher education in Russia. Universities should be incentivised to develop policies and programmes against dishonesty and punish misdemeanours. The new Ministry of Science and Higher Education needs to make combatting academic dishonesty a top priority.
GHANA
Accreditation lies at the heart of development
Eric Fredua-Kwarteng and Samuel Kwaku Ofosu
Accreditation performs a vital role in improving higher education, but it needs more resources and to be linked to government policy on development, making it strategically relevant as a tool of national planning.
CHINA
The consolidation of Chinese private higher education
Kai Yu
Chinese private higher education faces a series of mergers and acquisitions – with the latter currently hitting record levels. To stand out, private institutions need to focus on career-oriented education as students seek qualifications that are in demand in the labour market.
WORLD BLOG
GLOBAL
The shifting paradigm of higher education
Patrick Blessinger, Shai Reshef and Enakshi Sengupta
A growing chorus of people now see affordable lifelong education as a moral imperative and more universities are seeking ways to make university more affordable for more of their students – in some cases, or even in some states, making it tuition-fee free.
THE PUBLISHING CRISIS
GLOBAL
Towards a sustainable knowledge distribution system
Philip G Altbach and Hans de Wit
Without recognition of the need for institutional and individual differentiation, the knowledge distribution system will continue to be dysfunctional and ridden with inefficiencies and growing corruption. There is need for differentiation in academic publishing too, with more attention given to diversity and inclusion.
FEATURES
CHINA
Can Silk Road HE partnerships fill ‘vacuum’ left by US?
Yojana Sharma
Major changes in the global order will have implications for higher education partnerships in Europe and China, with China’s massive New Silk Road initiative playing a role that could even see China emerging as a global higher education leader, international academic experts say.
SINGAPORE
‘Rethink role of HE beyond rankings’, says minister
Kalinga Seneviratne
The role of higher education is changing, and the existing research-led university model and the system of university ranking and evaluation need to evolve with the times, Singapore’s Education Minister Ong Ye Kung told an international higher education conference recently.
DENMARK
Women are key to closing the talent gap, report finds
Jan Petter Myklebust
A better gender balance in the workforce and top management and more women recruited to the STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – at universities is the key to Danish technological advancement, according to a new report by the Innovation Fund Denmark.
eLEARNING AFRICA 2018
The eLearning Africa Conference, the largest in Africa on learning, training and technology, was held in Kigali, Rwanda from 26-28 September under the theme of “Uniting Africa”. The conference, which attracted hundreds of experts, focused on how technology can break down barriers, enabling Africans to share knowledge, learn and prepare for the future. University World News was there as a media partner.
AFRICA
Leaders urged to work towards digital knowledge parity
Wachira Kigotho
African leaders were urged to work towards 'digital parity' so as to enable the continent’s inhabitants to participate in and be represented as equals in both the digital and material worlds.
AFRICA
Call for urgent ‘e-volution’ of university libraries
Wachira Kigotho
Universities in Sub-Saharan Africa need to move away from the idea of libraries as buildings that stock books on dusty shelves to learning spaces that can facilitate access for students, academics and researchers to information at any time or place. For those libraries to attain cutting-edge status, however, they need to be properly funded.
AFRICA
Online MOOCs battle against traditional mindsets
Wachira Kigotho
The once glittering allure of massive open online courses (MOOCs), viewed as new learning vehicles to carry most of Africa’s youth to the frontiers of a university education, has dimmed.
AFRICA
E-learning boosts brain-gain and reduces costs
Rodrigue Rwirahira
Experts have called on African universities to immediately adopt the philosophy of brain-gain, facilitated by e-learning programmes, in a bid to reduce the cost of academic services and management, and invest more money in research and development.
AFRICA
Call to increase ICT research funding at universities
Rodrigue Rwirahira
Rwandan universities have called for extensive funding to research how information and communications technology (ICT), including mobile phones and the internet, could be leveraged to benefit ordinary users in various sectors.
AFRICA
Africa vs rest of world in lively digital revolution debate
Wachira Kigotho
“This house believes Africa has nothing to fear from a fourth industrial revolution and should seize the opportunity it represents,” was the motion of a highly contested debate at the 13th International Conference and Exhibition on ICT for Education, Training and Skills Development in Kigali, Rwanda, on 28 September.
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GLOBAL
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