7 April 2019  Issue No: 546

China’s higher education system is changing and China is now active in international higher education. For those countries and institutions which have come to rely on the recruitment of Chinese students – among them the United States, United Kingdom and Australia – this will create serious problems.

Chile’s Education Minister Marcela Cubillos has sent to all rectors of the 150 higher education institutions an eight-point voluntary agreement aimed at fostering greater female participation in high-level university positions. The agreement was drawn up by the council of university rectors, which advises the ministry.

Traditional knowledge transfer processes are not fit for today’s model of open innovation. They need to be rethought and reworked within new frameworks to ensure that a free flow of ideas in the ecosystem of actors plays an important role, based on openness, cooperation and curiosity.

There is a growing trend for universities to talk about educating students for global citizenship and about being global institutions. This claim is worth investigating. But how do we judge if a university really is global and not just international?

Refugees are an important part of international higher education. By studying transformative approaches to how refugees are integrated into education and wider society, we can ensure that they achieve their potential and that higher education institutions fulfil their humanitarian duties.

As the political crisis in the United Kingdom deepened over the impasse on which Brexit deal to agree with Europe, the 2019 International Higher Education Forum, organised by Universities UK International, examined how UK universities can continue to develop internationalisation in the event of a hard Brexit or no deal, University World News reports.

The “absurd politicisation” of appointments and promotions within universities – with the knowledge of vice-chancellors who operate on the basis of nepotism and patronage – is behind some of the promotion scandals currently plaguing Nigerian universities, according to a senior academic.

Because they will be the most affected, the youth of South Africa need to champion the fourth industrial revolution, but they need some serious support and investment from the government, and the rest of society.