3 March 2019  Issue No: 541

The number of top spots in global subject rankings held by United States higher education institutions is down from 34 to 28 in the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject, while the US’s nearest challenger, the United Kingdom, has raised its share from 10 to 13.

With rising military tensions between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of a major terror attack in the Pulwama district of the restive Himalayan state of Kashmir on 14 February, a number of Kashmiri students have faced sedition charges for comments made about the Pulwama attack.

Through promoting values of academic hospitality and mutuality we can reframe internationalisation of higher education in a more ethical way – based on cooperation and respect and intercultural engagement within and beyond the campus – and use it as a means to a greater common global good.

To truly transform higher education and promote gender equality requires more than raising numbers of female students and dealing with individual cases of abuse. It needs a deeper structural approach, but an increasingly competitive global higher education sector means such approaches take a low profile.

There are reportedly 30 names on a ‘watchlist’ of international academics and researchers on ‘society, culture and politics’ in Thailand, who are being detained and monitored by Thai immigration police while visiting Thailand, reportedly on the orders of the central Special Branch Bureau.

With a significant rise in the number of Nepali students studying abroad, particularly in Australia, the United States and Japan, more have been caught in scams, pressured by unscrupulous education consultancies, or failing to check the credentials of academic institutions they apply to.