23 June 2019  Issue No: 557

The United States’ higher education system has recorded its worst performance in 16 years and is accelerating in its rate of decline, according to the latest edition of the QS World University Rankings. The United Kingdom also had a poor year, with its third-worst performance since the ranking began.

The conflict in Syria has left the country’s higher education system “fragmented and broken”, with universities suffering politicisation, militarisation and human rights violations including disappearances and murder, according to researchers from the University of Cambridge and Syrian academics in exile.

Twenty years on from the Bologna Declaration, it is clear that without good procedures for recognition of foreign qualifications – and without trust between European Higher Education Area countries, which has to be built up gradually over time – large-scale academic mobility becomes practically impossible.

United Kingdom legislation brought in by Theresa May penalises international students who want to do more than one degree and dissuades them from starting up businesses, to the detriment of domestic students and the British economy. With May’s departure, the restrictions should be lifted.

Universities have evolved from being skills providers to drivers of change by enhancing connections between their education and research missions and the economic and social objectives of their region, as well as by developing an entrepreneurial mindset in their students through their programmes.

Media and higher education experts gathered in Toronto, Canada, on 12-14 June for the Worldviews 2019 Conference, to discuss democracy and the changing power relations of higher education and the media in the Global North and South – including the concept of expertise in a post-truth world and the voices amplified by emerging technologies. University World News is a sponsor.